Our Most Dangerous Labs Have a Problem No One Wants to Fix

A worker at a US government lab got bitten by a monkey carrying a deadly virus, and it turned out nobody knew what to do about it. Around the same time, someone from the same lab tried to smuggle outbreak samples into the country. All of this while everyone's worried about AI making bioweapons. Let's take a look.

The Fermi Paradox Just Got Much Worse

One answer to the Fermi Paradox is that advanced civilizations develop AI and lose interest in space travel. A researcher now argues that's backwards: AI, robots, and cheap probes make space exploration easier. Which means the paradox gets worse.

Physicists Say They’ve Found The Origin Of Causality

Over the years, physicists have become increasingly enamored with “quantum weirdness,” the many strange features of quantum mechanics that are extremely hard to explain. In a new paper, a group of researchers have tried to cut through the weirdness by analyzing how causal order really works. By doing so, they hope to set up a deeper framework that can combine quantum mechanics with gravity. Let’s take a look.

Origin of Time Tested in Experiment With Mini-Universe

A physicist built a mini-universe out of cold atoms and used it to test where time comes from. It made big headlines a few weeks ago, and I almost skipped it, as most "universe in a lab" stories are nonsense. But then I actually read the paper. Let's take a look.

Russia Is Drilling 8 km Down to Prove Oil Never Runs Out

Putin's former thesis advisor is convinced that oil never runs out, and Russia is now drilling 8 kilometres into the ground to prove him right. Is there really infinite oil down there, or is Russia about to end up with a very expensive hole? Let's take a look.