An anonymous reader shares a report: Technology to build cleaner, more efficient air conditioners does exist. Two major AC manufacturers, Daikin and Gree Electric Appliances, shared the top award at last year's Global Cooling Prize, an international competition focused on designing climate-friendly AC tech. Both companies created ACs with higher internal performance that used less environmentally damaging refrigerants; the new units could reduce their impact on the climate by five times. [...] Another strategy is to double down on heat pumps, which are air conditioners that also work in reverse, using vapor compression to absorb and move heat into a home, instead of releasing it outside. Heat pumps usually cost several thousand dollars, though the Inflation Reduction Act includes a proposal for a significant heat pump rebate, and President Joe Biden has invoked the Defense Production Act to ramp up production.

Experts have argued installing heat pumps is critical to another important climate goal: transitioning away from fossil fuel-powered furnaces, which are an even bigger source of emissions than cooling. The holy grail of HVAC would be a heat pump that could provide both heating and cooling but isn't dependent on vapor compression. [...] Another challenge, though, is that heat pumps are not the easiest appliance to install, especially for renters, who don't necessarily have the money or ability to invest in bulky HVAC systems. To address this problem, a company called Gradient has designed a heat pump that easily slides over a windowsill -- it doesn't block light -- and currently uses a refrigerant called R32, which is supposed to have a (comparatively) low global warming potential. Gradient recently won a contract to install its units in New York City public housing.

The rapid warming of the Arctic, a definitive sign of climate change, is occurring even faster than previously described, researchers in Finland said Thursday. From a report: Over the past four decades the region has been heating up four times faster than the global average, not the commonly reported two to three times. And some parts of the region, notably the Barents Sea north of Norway and Russia, are warming up to seven times faster, they said. The result is faster melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which leads to greater sea-level rise. But it also affects atmospheric circulation in North America and elsewhere, with impacts on weather like extreme rainfall and heat waves, although some of the impacts are a subject of debate among scientists.

While scientists have long known that average temperatures in the Arctic are increasing faster than the rest of the planet, the rate has been a source of confusion. Studies and news accounts have estimated it is two to three times faster than the global average. Mika Rantanen, a researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki, said he and his colleagues decided to look at the issue in the summer of 2020, when intense heat waves in the Siberian Arctic drew a lot of attention. The new findings are bolstered by those of another recent study, led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which found similar rates of warming, although over a different time span.

Researchers have begun tracking a newly identified virus in China, with dozens of cases recorded so far. From a report: The novel Langya henipavirus (LayV) was first detected in the north-eastern provinces of Shandong and Henan in late 2018 but was only formally identified by scientists last week. The virus was likely transmitted from animals to humans, scientists said, and Taiwan's health authority is now monitoring the spread. The researchers tested wild animals and found LayV viral RNA in more than a quarter of 262 shrews, "a finding that suggests that the shrew may be a natural reservoir." The virus was also detected in 2% of domestic goats and 5% of dogs.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Associated Press: Researchers are seeking thousands of volunteers in the U.S. and Europe to test the first potential vaccine against Lyme disease in 20 years -- in hopes of better fighting the tick-borne threat. Lyme is a growing problem, with cases rising and warming weather helping ticks expand their habitat. While a vaccine for dogs has long been available, the only Lyme vaccine for humans was pulled off the U.S. market in 2002 from lack of demand, leaving people to rely on bug spray and tick checks. Now Pfizer and French biotech Valneva are aiming to avoid previous pitfalls in developing a new vaccine to protect both adults and kids as young as 5 from the most common Lyme strains on two continents.

Most vaccines against other diseases work after people are exposed to a germ. The Lyme vaccine offers a different strategy -- working a step earlier to block a tick bite from transmitting the infection, said Dr. Gary Wormser, a Lyme expert at New York Medical College who isn't involved with the new research. How? It targets an "outer surface protein" of the Lyme bacterium called OspA that's present in the tick's gut. It's estimated a tick must feed on someone for about 36 hours before the bacteria spreads to its victim. That delay gives time for antibodies the tick ingests from a vaccinated person's blood to attack the germs right at the source.

In small, early-stage studies, Pfizer and Valneva reported no safety problems and a good immune response. The newest study will test if the vaccine, called VLA15, really protects and is safe. The companies aim to recruit at least 6,000 people in Lyme-prone areas including the Northeast U.S. plus Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden. They'll receive three shots, either the vaccine or a placebo, between now and next spring's tick season. A year later, they'll get a single booster dose.

Scientists have discovered that by microwaving fish waste, they can quickly and efficiently create carbon nano-onions (CNOs) -- a unique nanoform of carbon that has applications in energy storage and medicine. This method could be used to make cheaper and more sustainable LEDs in the future. The researchers from Nagoya Institute of Technology in Japan published their findings in Green Chemistry. Smithsonian Magazine reports: CNOs are nanostructures with spherical carbon shells in a concentric layered structure similar to an onion. They have "drawn extensive attention worldwide in terms of energy storage and conversion" because of their "exceptionally high electrical and thermal conductivity, as well as large external surface area," per the paper. They've been used in electronics and for biomedical applications, such as bio-imaging and sensing and drug delivery, write the authors in the study. Though CNOs were first reported in the 1980s, conventional methods of manufacturing them have required high temperatures, a vacuum and a lot of time and energy. Other techniques are expensive and call for complex catalysts or dangerous acidic or basic conditions. This "greatly limits the potential of CNOs," per a statement from Nagoya Institute of Technology.

The newly discovered method requires only one step -- microwave pyrolysis of fish scales extracted from fish waste -- and can be done within ten seconds, per the authors. How exactly the fish scales are converted into CNOs is unclear, though the team thinks it has to do with how collagen in the fish scales can absorb enough microwave radiation to quickly increase in temperature. This leads to pyrolysis, or thermal decomposition, which causes the collagen to break down into gasses. These gasses then support the creation of CNOs. This method is a "straightforward way to convert fish waste into infinitely more useful materials," and the resulting CNOs have a high crystallinity, which gives them "exceptional optical properties," per the statement. They also have high functionalization, which means they're "bonded to other small molecules on their surface," writes Ellen Phiddian for Cosmos. This combination of attributes means the CNOs can glow bright blue.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: Barred from her lab by pandemic restrictions, behavioral ecologist Daniela C. Robler caught local jumping spiders and kept them in clear plastic boxes on her windowsill, planning to test their reactions to 3-D-printed models of predatory spiders. When she came home from dinner one night, though, she noticed something strange. "They were all hanging from the lids of their boxes," says Robler, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Konstanz in Germany. She had never seen jumping spiders suspended motionless on silk lines like this before. "I had no idea what happened," Robler says. "I thought they were dead." It turns out the jumping spiders were simply asleep -- and that Robler had discovered an alternate sleeping habit of the species Evarcha arcuata, which had been known to build silk sleeping dens in curled-up dead leaves. But the real surprise came when she decided to spy on them all night. [...]

Mostly the spider just hung there. But then her legs started to twitch, and her abdomen and even her silk-producing spinnerets did so as well. Sometimes her legs curled in toward her sternum. With every spider Robler recorded, these odd movements only appeared during distinct bouts that lasted a little more than a minute and occurred periodically throughout the night. "They were just uncontrollably twitching in a way that really looked a lot like when dogs or cats dream and have their little REM phases," she says. [...] Robler and her colleagues wondered if the twitching spiders could be experiencing something like an REM phase of sleep and possibly even having dreams. "We were like, 'Okay, that would be insane,'" she says. Then she thought, "Let's figure it out," and immediately changed her research plans for the spiders.

[...] When Robler recorded 34 sleeping spiderlings, she found that their twitches were accompanied by unmistakable eye-tube movements that did not happen during other phases of sleep. [...] But it is too soon to say for sure that the spiders are experiencing something akin to REM sleep in humans. The researchers first need to confirm the spiders are actually asleep during this phase by showing that they are less responsive to their environment. Robler and her "dream team" of co-authors have already started those tests. And she points out that the leg curling is a particularly striking aspect of the spiders' REM-like phase because that pose is typically only seen in dead spiders. Spiders use hydraulic pressure maintained by muscles to keep their legs extended, and the curling could result from the muscle paralysis that typifies REM sleep. The team's initial findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

Rainwater almost everywhere on Earth has unsafe levels of "forever chemicals," according to new research. saulgood shares a report: Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a large family of human-made chemicals that don't occur in nature. They are known as 'forever chemicals' because they don't break down in the environment. They have non-stick or stain repellent properties so can be found in household items like food packaging, electronics, cosmetics and cookware. But now researchers at the University of Stockholm have found them in rainwater in most locations on the planet -- including Antarctica. There is no safe space to escape them. Safe guideline levels for some of these forever chemicals have dropped dramatically over the last two decades due to new insights into their toxicity. "There has been an astounding decline in guideline values for PFAS in drinking water in the last 20 years," says Ian Cousins, lead author of the study and professor at the Department of Environmental Science, Stockholm University. For one well-known substance, the "cancer-causing perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)," water guideline values have declined by 37.5 million times in the US.

India's new rocket launched for the first time on Saturday night (Aug. 6) but failed to deliver its satellite payloads into their intended orbit due to a sensor issue. Space.com reports: The 112-foot-tall (34 meters) Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) lifted off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on India's southeastern coast on Saturday at 11:48 p.m. EDT (0348 GMT and 9:18 a.m. India Standard Time on Sunday, Aug. 7) with two satellites onboard. The rocket's three solid-fueled stages performed well, but its fourth and final stage, a liquid-fueled "velocity trimming module" (VTM), hit a snag: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) officials reported a loss of data from the rocket and, just over five hours after liftoff, ISRO announced the mission had failed.

"The entire vehicle performance was very good" at the start, but ultimately left the two satellites in the wrong orbit, ISRO Chairman S. Somanath said in a video statement after the launch. "The satellites were placed in an elliptical orbit in place of a circular orbit." Instead of placing the satellites in a circular orbit 221 miles (356 kilometers) above Earth, the rocket left them in an orbit that ranged from 221 miles to as close as 47 miles (76 km). That orbit was not stable, and the satellites have "already come down, and they are not usable," Somanath said. ISRO officials said on Twitter that a sensor failure that was not detected in time to switch to a "salvage action" caused the orbit issue. An investigation into the failure is planned.

David Glowacki, an artist and computational molecular physicist, has created a VR experience called Isness-D that aims to recapture a transcendence experience he had when he fell in the mountains fifteen years ago. "[O]n four key indicators used in studies of psychedelics, the program showed the same effect as a medium dose of LSD or psilocybin (the main psychoactive component of 'magic' mushrooms)," reports MIT Technology Review. From the report: Isness-D is designed for groups of four to five people based anywhere in the world. Each participant is represented as a diffuse cloud of smoke with a ball of light right about where a person's heart would be. Participants can partake in an experience called energetic coalescence: they gather in the same spot in the virtual-reality landscape to overlap their diffuse bodies, making it impossible to tell where each person begins and ends. The resulting sense of deep connectedness and ego attenuation mirrors feelings commonly brought about by a psychedelic experience.

[...] To create it, Glowacki took aesthetic inspiration from quantum mechanics -- as he puts it, "where the definition of what's matter and what's energy starts to become blurred." For their paper, Glowacki and his collaborators measured the emotional response Isness-D elicited in 75 participants. They based their measurements on four metrics used in psychedelics research -- the MEQ30 (a mystical experience questionnaire), the ego dissolution inventory scale, the "communitas" scale, and the "inclusion of community in self" scale. Communitas is defined as an experience of intense shared humanity that transcends social structure. Participants' responses were then compared with those given in published, double-blind psychedelics studies. For all four metrics, Isness-D elicited responses indistinguishable from those associated with medium doses of psychedelics. On the mystical experience scale, Isness-D participants reported an experience as intense as that elicited by 20 milligrams of psilocybin or 200 micrograms of LSD, and stronger than that induced by microdoses of either substance. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

Polio is back, monkeypox isn't slowing down, COVID-19 is still around -- and now there's more not-so-good news on the infection front: over 200 human diseases could get worse because of climate change, according to a new study. From a report: Researchers have known for a long time that the changing climate affects disease. Warmer temperatures can make regions newly hospitable to disease-carrying mosquitoes, while floods from more frequent storms can carry bacteria in their surges of water. Most research, though, only focused on a handful of threats or one disease at a time. The new study, published in Nature Climate Change, built a comprehensive map of all of the ways various climate hazards could interact with 375 documented human infectious diseases. The authors reviewed over 77,000 scientific articles about those diseases and climate hazards. They found that, of those 375 diseases, 218 could be aggravated by things like heatwaves, rising sea levels, and wildfires.

The study found four main ways climate change exacerbates diseases. First, problems happen when changes cause disease-carrying animals to move closer to people. For example, animal habitats are disrupted by things like wildfires that drive bats and rodents into new areas, increasing the likelihood they'll transmit diseases like Ebola to people. Other research shows that climate change makes viruses more likely to jump from animals to people, as happened with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. That phenomenon also likely contributed to the 2016 Zika outbreaks.

"No one imagined commercial space tourism taking hold, no one believed crowd-funded satellites and mega constellations at low earth orbit were possible, and no one could have conceived of the sheer popularity of space entrepreneurship," reads a statement Friday from the chair of America's Federal Communications Commission. "But it's all happening...."

And Reuters reports on what happens next: With Earth's orbit growing more crowded with satellites, a U.S. government agency on Friday said it would begin revising decades-old rules on getting rid of space junk and on other issues such as satellite refueling and inspecting and repairing in-orbit spacecraft. "We believe the new space age needs new rules," Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said after the 4-0 FCC vote, adding that current rules "were largely built for another era."

Rosenworcel said the FCC needs "to make sure our rules are prepared for the proliferation of satellites in orbit and new activities in our higher altitudes."

The FCC also plans to look at "new ways to clean up orbital debris. After all, there are thousands of metric tons of junk in space," Rosenworcel added. The FCC will look at "the potential for orbital debris remediation and removal functions that offer the prospect of improvement in the orbital debris environment....."

"The FCC remains the only agency to license virtually every commercial space mission that touches the United States," FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said. "With that power comes the responsibility to understand the missions we authorize, and to create an enabling regulatory environment that opens new doors while still protecting against new risks."
A statement from the FCC describes their new policy review as a "modernization effort."

And it made a point of acknowledging that in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing has "the potential to build entire industries, create new jobs, mitigate climate change, and advance America's economic, scientific, technological, and national security interests."

"If you've been following Joe Barnard's rocketry projects for the past few years, you'll know that one of his primary goals has been to propulsively land a model rocket like SpaceX," reports Hackaday.

"Now, 7 years into the rollercoaster journey, he has finally achieved that goal with the latest version of his Scout rocket." Many things need to come together to launch AND land a rocket on standard hobby-grade solid fuel rocket motors. A core component is stabilization of the rocket during the entire flight, which achieved using a thrust-vectoring control (TVC) mount for the rocket motors and a custom flight computer loaded with carefully tuned guidance software. Until recently, the TVC mounts were 3D printed, but Joe upgraded it to machined aluminum to eliminate as much flex and play as possible.

Since solid-fuel rockets can't technically be throttled, [Joe] originally tried to time the ignition time of the descent motor in such a manner that it would burn out as the rocket touches down. The ignition time and exact thrust numbers simply weren't repeatable enough, so in his 2020 landing attempts, he achieved some throttling effect by oscillating the TVC side to side, reducing the vertical thrust component. This eventually gave way to the final solution, a pair of ceramic pincers which block the thrust of the motors as required.
"I have been trying to do what you just saw for seven years," Barnard says in the video, remembering that he started the project back in the fall of 2015. "Not because it's revolutionary or game-changing for model rocketry, but because it's a really cool project, and I knew I would learn a lot." (On Twitter, Barnard added that "I had no background in aero, electrical engineering, coding, etc so it took a lot of trial and error.")

And in the video Barnard made sure to thank his 690 supporters on Patreon — and also shared a surprise. He'd printed out a sheet of paper with the name of every one of his Patreon supporters, rolled it up, and inserted it into the hollow center of his rocket before the flight. "So if you support, you were part of this."

The Patreon account offers more details on Barnard's mission. "Learning by experimentation is the most effective way to gain a deep understanding of new concepts, which is why providing hands-on experience with advanced rocketry components is important for the next generation of scientists, engineers, and astronauts."

And the video ends with Bernard describing the next projects he'll attempt:

• More SpaceX-like vertical landings

• A 9-foot model of SpaceX's Starship Super Heavy rocket

• A special secret project known only as "the meat rocket"

• An actual model-rocket space shot — that is, a rocket that ascends over 100 kilometers

When a U.S. satellite passed over Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a Russian satellite was launched close behind it "with capabilities unknown," reports the Drive, adding that it's now "getting suspiciously close..." Russia has launched satellite 14F150 Nivelir into orbit under a mission dubbed Kosmos-2558, and its current orbital path could soon place it in close proximity to what is reported to be the spy satellite designated USA-326. Unconfirmed rumors that the asset will serve as an 'inspector' satellite to covertly spy on nearby spacecraft have begun to circulate online following the launch and would line up with Russia's known on-orbit anti-satellite weapons capabilities and developments.

Its exact purpose is unknown at present, but it has been described as an "inspector" satellite, a term that is often associated with so-called "killer satellites...." Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics, or @planet4589 on Twitter, has noted that Kosmos-2558's current orbital path will soon place it within 80 km of what is believed to be the USA 326 satellite. For reference, the Center for Astrophysics is a collaborative effort run jointly by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Harvard College Observatory....

USA-326 was launched in February of this year by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket out of Vandenberg Space Force Base, its mission designated NROL-87, which is a classified national security operation led by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in partnership with SpaceX. A press release shared by the NRO following the initial launch claimed that NROL-87 was designed, built, and now operated by the NRO to support its "overhead reconnaissance mission," which is largely centered around protecting national security through the exploitation of space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the story.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A photo tweeted by a famous French physicist supposedly of Proxima Centauri by the James Webb Space Telescope was actually a slice of chorizo. Etienne Klein, research director at France's Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission posted the photo last week, claiming it showed the closest star to the sun. "This level of detail," Klein wrote. "A new world is revealed day after day."

But a few days later, Klein revealed that the photo he tweeted was not the work of the world's most powerful space telescope, as he had in fact tweeted a slice of chorizo sausage. "According to contemporary cosmology, no object belonging to Spanish charcuterie exists anywhere but on Earth," he said after apologizing for tricking so many people. "Like an idiot, I got screwed," tweeted one French user. "Same," replied another, "the source was so credible" Klein told French news outlet Le Point that his intention had been to educate people about fake news online, adding that "I also think that if I hadn't said it was a James Webb photo, it wouldn't have been so successful."

With the help of SpaceX and a Falcon 9 rocket, South Korea launched its first mission to the moon. "The successful launch of Danuri, officially known as the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, takes the country beyond Earth's orbit for the first time," reports Nature. From the report: Danuri should arrive at its destination around mid-December. Its trajectory means it will take longer than most past missions to the Moon, which typically arrived in days, but will require minimal fuel. About an hour after lift-off, the spacecraft detached from the Falcon 9 rocket on which it launched. The Korea Aerospace Research Institute's control centre in Daejeon then took command and made contact with the spacecraft.

The bulk of the mission's scientific observations will take place once Danuri reaches the Moon, which it will orbit for a year at 100 kilometres above the lunar surface. KGRS has a broader energy range than previous y-ray detectors sent to the Moon, and scientists hope that it will create the clearest maps yet of the distribution of elements including iron, titanium, uranium and thorium. [...] [T]he spectrometer is also sensitive enough to detect hydrogen, which can be used to infer the presence of water on the surface, and create a water-resource map of the entire Moon. Previous probes have struggled to map the presence of water beyond the poles, where it is relatively more abundant [...].

KMAG will take precise measurements of the magnetic field on the surface. It will also study electric currents induced by the magnetic field of the solar wind, which streams out into space from the Sun, says Garrick-Bethell, who is part of the instrument's science team. Studying how these currents pass through the Moon could reveal what the Moon is made of deep inside. To do this, Danuri will make use of simultaneous measurements by two NASA probes currently circling the Moon, says Garrick-Bethell. This "will make a beautiful experiment that was only briefly attempted in the Apollo era, but not over the entire Moon," he says. You can watch a recording of the launch here.

To the naked eye, the Mako Compressor Station outside the dusty West Texas crossroads of Lenorah appears unremarkable, similar to tens of thousands of oil and gas operations scattered throughout the oil-rich Permian Basin. What's not visible through the chain-link fence is the plume of invisible gas, primarily methane, billowing from the gleaming white storage tanks up into the cloudless blue sky. From a report: The Mako station, owned by a subsidiary of West Texas Gas, was observed releasing an estimated 870 kilograms of methane -- an extraordinarily potent greenhouse gas -- into the atmosphere each hour. That's the equivalent impact on the climate of burning seven tanker trucks full of gasoline every day.

But Mako's outsized emissions aren't illegal, or even regulated. And it was only one of 533 methane "super emitters" detected during a 2021 aerial survey of the Permian conducted by Carbon Mapper, a partnership of university researchers and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The group documented massive amounts of methane venting into the atmosphere from oil and gas operations across the Permian, a 250-mile-wide bone-dry expanse along the Texas-New Mexico border that a billion years ago was the bottom of a shallow sea. Hundreds of those sites were seen spewing the gas over and over again. Ongoing leaks, gushers, going unfixed.

The FCC may have just advanced the industrialization of space. Commissioners have voted in favor of an inquiry that will explore in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing (ISAM). The move would both help officials understand the demands and risks of current in-space production technology while facilitating new projects. This could help companies build satellites and stations in orbit, for instance, while finding new ways to deal with growing volumes of space debris. From a report: The vote helps open a new "Space Innovation" docket at the FCC. It also comes two days after the regulator updated its rules to create more breathing room for satellite broadband frequencies. Expect considerably more space-related developments going forward, then. Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel saw the inquiry as vital. Existing rules were made for "another era" where space programs were exclusively government-run, she said. The support ISAM will ideally help the FCC adapt to space tourism, huge private satellite constellations and a larger general shift toward commercial spaceflight.

Doctors have identified a protein in the blood they believe could serve as an early warning sign for patients who are at risk of diabetes and death from cancer. From a report: Researchers in Sweden and China analysed two decades of health records from more than 4,500 middle-aged adults on the Malmo diet and cancer study. They found that those with the highest levels of prostasin, a protein that circulates in the blood, were almost twice as likely to have diabetes than those with the lowest levels. Some of those enrolled on the study already had diabetes, so the scientists looked at who among those without the disease went on to be diagnosed later. People in the top quarter for prostasin levels turned out to be 76% more likely to develop diabetes than those in the bottom quarter.

Dr Xue Bao, the first author on the study at the Affiliated hospital of Nanjing University medical school in China, said prostasin was a potential new "risk marker" for diabetes, but also death from cancer, particularly in people who have high blood sugar. Prostasin plays several roles in the body, such as regulating blood pressure and blood volume, and it also suppresses the growth of tumours that are fuelled by high blood sugar. While type 2 diabetes is known to raise the risk of certain cancers, including pancreatic, liver, bowel and endometrial tumours, the biological mechanisms are far from clear.

The Biden administration declared monkeypox a public health emergency on Thursday as cases topped 6,600 nationwide. From a report: The declaration could facilitate access to emergency funds, allow health agencies to collect more data about cases and vaccinations, accelerate vaccine distribution and make it easier for doctors to prescribe treatment. "We're prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus and we urge every American to take monkeypox seriously and to take responsibility to help us tackle this virus," Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a Thursday briefing about the emergency declaration. A quarter of U.S. cases are in New York state, which declared a state of emergency last week. California and Illinois followed suit with emergency declarations Monday.

Steve Nadis, reporting for Quanta Magazine: In 1963, the mathematician Roy Kerr found a solution to Einstein's equations that precisely described the space-time outside what we now call a rotating black hole. (The term wouldn't be coined for a few more years.) In the nearly six decades since his achievement, researchers have tried to show that these so-called Kerr black holes are stable. What that means, explained Jeremie Szeftel, a mathematician at Sorbonne University, "is that if I start with something that looks like a Kerr black hole and give it a little bump" -- by throwing some gravitational waves at it, for instance -- "what you expect, far into the future, is that everything will settle down, and it will once again look exactly like a Kerr solution." The opposite situation -- a mathematical instability -- "would have posed a deep conundrum to theoretical physicists and would have suggested the need to modify, at some fundamental level, Einstein's theory of gravitation," said Thibault Damour, a physicist at the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies in France.

In a 912-page paper posted online on May 30, Szeftel, Elena Giorgi of Columbia University and Sergiu Klainerman of Princeton University have proved that slowly rotating Kerr black holes are indeed stable. The work is the product of a multiyear effort. The entire proof -- consisting of the new work, an 800-page paper by Klainerman and Szeftel from 2021, plus three background papers that established various mathematical tools -- totals roughly 2,100 pages in all. The new result "does indeed constitute a milestone in the mathematical development of general relativity," said Demetrios Christodoulou, a mathematician at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. Shing-Tung Yau, an emeritus professor at Harvard University who recently moved to Tsinghua University, was similarly laudatory, calling the proof "the first major breakthrough" in this area of general relativity since the early 1990s. "It is a very tough problem," he said. He did stress, however, that the new paper has not yet undergone peer review. But he called the 2021 paper, which has been approved for publication, both "complete and exciting."