Science

Boston's Form Energy says its iron-air batteries store up to 100 hours' worth of energy at a tenth the cost of a lithium battery farm. They could make a huge contribution to long-term storage as the world makes its transition toward renewable energy.

Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories have come up with a new design that addresses a number of shortcomings with current molten salt batteries, demonstrating one that can be constructed far more cheaply than currently available versions.

The world produces more than 1.8 billion tons of steel a year, releasing nearly twice that weight in carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It's a huge decarbonization challenge, but steel giant ArcelorMittal is starting on a new green plant in Spain.

We're seeing some significant advances in efforts to leverage light-sensitive proteins to improve human health, a field known as optogenetics, but new research out of Germany flips the script on this emerging technology.

Microglia are immune cells that clean out unwanted debris in the brain and central nervous system, but it turns out they might help heal injured neurons too – a discovery that could pave the way for new treatments for epilepsy and other conditions.

It goes without saying that the earlier someone can be warned of an impending heart attack or stroke, the better. A new skin patch could provide such warnings, by sending ultrasound pulses into the wearer's body.

Black holes are notoriously dark objects, but now astronomers have spotted strange light coming from behind one. The X-ray echoes seem to be the result of the intense gravity of the object warping space and bending the light back around into view.

Controversial physicist Avi Loeb is on the hunt for aliens again. His new Galileo Project aims to track unexplained oddities in the sky, study interstellar objects, and even examine the "possibility" of alien satellites watching us from orbit.

Fifty years ago this week, Apollo 15 lifted off on the first true lunar exploration mission. Using an improved Lunar Module, the ninth crewed Apollo mission featured the first vehicle to drive on the Moon, allowing astronauts to roam farther than ever before.

Researchers have discovered a material that can switch between an insulator and a conductor freely, even at room temperature. The material, a compound of manganese and sulfide (MnS2), starts off as an insulator but becomes conductive under pressure.

A new material from researchers in Spain and Portugal serves as another compelling example of bioactive plastic, making use of extracts from mango leaves to fend off food pathogens and ultraviolet light.

One shortcoming of carbon fiber that scientists have been working to address is its tendency to burn at high temperatures, and an international team of researchers have now found a low-cost and scalable solution to this problem.

Last year DeepMind put forward a solution to a 50-year-old science problem, demonstrating how its AlphaFold AI could predict the 3D structures of unique proteins, and which it has now used to predict structures for nearly every protein in the human body.

Because fruits just dangle from the main plant before ultimately falling off, one might think that they are unable to communicate with that plant. According to new research, however, tomato fruits are able to transmit alerts to their mother plant.

Our brains are extremely fast at recognizing the faces of people important to us. Now, a new study has identified a previously unknown population of brain cells that may be hybrids of sensory and memory neurons, which enable this quick recall.

As work continues to clean up the mess left by the meltdown of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011, scientists are enlisting some local help in their efforts to survey the damage, in the form of rat snakes that frequent the area.

Coral rely on a symbiotic relationship with algae to maintain good health. Scientists have now gained unprecedented insight into this phenomenon, making observations of coral cells engulfing algae for the first time ever.

Along with their batteries, many electric cars now utilize supercapacitors for tasks such as quickly delivering power while accelerating. Thanks to new research, a key component of such devices could soon be made from waste tamarind shells.

Physicists have outlined a relatively simple new way to create antimatter, by firing two lasers at each other to reproduce the conditions near a neutron star, converting light into matter and antimatter. Doing so could unlock cosmological mysteries.

It’s tricky detecting gravitational waves – these spacetime ripples are often drowned out by background vibrations from earthquakes and human activity. Now a pair of astrophysicists has proposed a new location that would be far quieter – the Moon.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have created a crystal made entirely of electrons. The structures have been theorized for decades, but this marks the first time they’ve been experimentally confirmed in the lab.

Working to widen the applications for electronic paper technology are scientists at Sweden's University of Technology, whose latest display takes on an inverted design to offer a full array of accurate and brilliant colors.

Researchers from the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology have developed a wearable health-monitoring system that's attached to a user's wrist, and can stretch by as much as 30 percent without affecting display or monitoring performance.

Researchers have demonstrated a new approach to harnessing the power of ambient radio waves, developing a novel chip that can convert Wi-Fi signals into power for a small LED, and possibly other small electronics and sensors.

A quantum internet could one day allow quantum computers to team up and tackle some gigantic problems. Researchers at Toshiba are a step closer, demonstrating quantum communications sent over a record-breaking 600 km (373 miles) of optic fiber.

Progress on quantum computers may soon stall. Cosmic rays streaming to Earth can interfere with the integrity of information in quantum computers, and now an MIT team has shown just how vulnerable they are and what it might take to protect them.

Current-gen quantum computing "qubits" need to be kept incredibly cold – below 0.1 Kelvin (-273.05 °C/-459.5 °F). But new "hot qubits" developed at UNSW can work 15 times hotter, opening the door to radically smaller, cheaper quantum computers.