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Today:
Data centers are a target of modern warfare. How do we secure the infrastructure that runs our digital lives?
NEWS | 23 October 2026
The data center was damaged, but Olshansky’s employees had been sheltering elsewhere when the attack happened. Other data centers haven’t fared as well. What is inarguable is that, like them or not, data centers are increasingly important parts of our lives, and as such, they’re increasingly seen as fair targets in war. Still, some protection is possible without going as far as installing missile defenses at key data center locations. The recent attacks could change where companies choose to build their data centers, Martin says.

Top Stories:
Super Typhoon Champi sets the record for strongest storm of 2026
NEWS | 23 October 2026
A cyclone in the Philippine Sea reached wind speeds of about 185 miles per hour (around 290 kilometers per hour) on Tuesday afternoon EST. Those wind speeds are the strongest of any storm this year, forecasters say. But the typhoon underscores how tumultuous Pacific storm activity has been in comparison with activity in the Atlantic. Champi is the 25th northwestern Pacific storm this year, according to CSU’s tracker. To be considered a typhoon or a hurricane, a cyclone must achieve wind speeds of at least 74 mph (119 kph).

World:
America’s compact between science and politics is broken
NEWS | 23 October 2026
Around the same time President Donald Trump’s budget proposal came out—with massive cuts to science funding. DOGE’s cuts sliced through American research grants like a thresher, “but this was much murkier,” Reynolds says. Now, to be sure, the end product of science is supposed to be science, not grants or tenure. It doesn’t explain why the former conservative think tanker Russell Vought could use control of the wonkish Office of Management and Budget to zero out research funding. And in 1980 Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act, moving ownership of the results of government-funded university research from the government to the universities.

Current Events:
Why we probably live in a quantum multiverse
NEWS | 23 October 2026
Quantum mechanics, which recently turned 100 years old, ranks as the most successful theory in the history of physics. Yet on a fundamental level, we still don’t understand what quantum mechanics is saying about how the world works. If there are 1023 particles interfering with one another on such tiny and fast quantum scales, no human has a chance to see constructive quantum interference. The Many Worlds interpretation is gaining momentum as a candidate to solve the quantum measurement problem. One such puzzle concerns the origin of uncertainty, chance and probability, which are so central to quantum mechanics.

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SPONSORED | 23 October 2026
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News Flash:
The provocative new theory that could explain aging and disease
NEWS | 23 October 2026
“Everybody agrees that mitochondrial dysfunction is part of aging biology,” says Matt Kaeberlein, former director of the Healthy Aging and Longevity Research Institute at the University of Washington. “If you’re going to argue that everything starts with mitochondrial dysfunction, I think most people would push back against that.” But the idea doesn’t need to explain all of aging to be worth chasing. “Mitochondrial dysfunction may contribute to the vast majority of common diseases,” he says. These reactive oxygen species, or ROS, can do real damage to mitochondria, cells and organs. “Hippocrates knew about it 2,000 years ago,” says Christopher Palmer, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist and author of the 2022 book Brain Energy.

Latest:
The Selfish Gene at 50
NEWS | 23 October 2026
As its title suggests, The Selfish Gene argued that evolution is driven by selfish competition among the “fundamental particles” of inheritance: genes. In The Selfish Gene, “there are at least four [different] uses of ‘selfish’ that we glide between,” Ågren says. A focus on what any given model leaves out can cut both ways, however: occasional “selfish” gene conflicts really can occur. If that were so, the “selfish gene” hypothesis would seem now disproven in general. All this is to say that despite (or even because of) its myriad interpretive confusions, The Selfish Gene is still relevant.

Breaking:
Can AI predict whether you’ll die from cancer from just an image of your face?
NEWS | 23 October 2026
Can AI predict whether you’ll die from cancer from just an image of your face? A new artificial intelligence model can predict a cancer patient’s risk of dying from a single photograph of their face, according to new research. When it came to the age estimate, smokers, for instance, were more likely to look older than their age, Mak says. Mak’s hope is that, eventually, an AI model like this could be deployed in hospitals and serve as an extra data point in doctors’ decision-making. For one, the cancer survival model was trained on a Boston-area cancer patient population that was majority white.

Trending:
Astronomers unlock a mystery hidden in van Gogh’s The Starry Night
NEWS | 23 October 2026
“To my eyes, the star cluster in The Starry Night was the Hyades in Taurus. At top: The central cluster of stars in The Starry Night (left) and the Hyades cluster in Taurus (center). At bottom: The stars in van Gogh’s 1888 painting Café Terrace at Night and the stars around the Summer Triangle (center). “The Actual Sky of Van Gogh’s Starry Night: A Multidisciplinary Reconstruction,” by Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim et al., in Scientific Reports. Kim also visited Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in June and July 2019 to fully capture van Gogh’s field of view from the precise location where he painted The Starry Night.

This Just In:
The mathematical impossibility of making a perfect world map
NEWS | 23 October 2026
But a better world map than the Mercator projection isI agree my information will be processed in accordance with the Scientific American Inc. Privacy Policy . For centuries, this world map was the standard. Technically cartographer James Gall developed a similar world map a century earlier, but it received little attention at the time. This is a variant of the world map that is neither area-preserving nor angle-preserving. They determined the details of the new world map in two steps: First, the researchers combined two existing projections using custom-developed graphics software.

Today:
Alarm grows over Russian satellite’s provocative approach to U.S.-owned satellite
NEWS | 23 October 2026
A short time-lapse image shows the Russian satellite KOSMOS-2612 ( fainter dot at right ) chasing the Finnish-American satellite ICEYE-X36 ( bright dot at left ) over South America on the morning of October 18, 2026. How close is too close for encounters between sensitive spacecraft orbiting Earth? With a mysterious approach to another satellite, Russia’s military may be trying to find outA Russian satellite came dangerously close to a Finnish-American satellite this weekend in a provocative maneuver that could foreshadow the new norm for space warfare. Such a maneuver is not inherently aggressive or ill-intentioned, says Victoria Samson, head of space policy at the Secure World Foundation. “This kind of thing can change quickly, but I would hold off hysterical speculation until we know more about it.”

Top Stories:
New superconducting chip aims to help tame fusion plasma
NEWS | 23 October 2026
The superconducting chip used for the fusion plasma experiments. On Monday Brookhaven National Laboratory debuted a superconducting chip designed to help monitor fusion plasma in real time. The lab developed it with other U.S. Department of Energy facilities and the AI hardware start-up Great Sky. The chip’s makers hope their hardware can operate quickly enough to keep pace with changes in the plasma and help control them. It’s then that Great Sky’s hardware could finally face a fusion plasma with no hard drive in between.

World:
We’re addicted to social media. How do we get sober?
NEWS | 23 October 2026
“We’ve clearly crossed a Rubicon,” says lawyer Matthew P. Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center. But now, as everything online morphs into algorithmic social media, the case for concern has crystallized into something quite specific. “But when we start considering social media addiction, it becomes a tractable question.”Clark, who studies gambling addiction, sees modern social media as engrossing in the same way as slot machines. In a 2017 experiment, he found that social media mostly displaces time we would have spent watching other kinds of media. Recent court cases have used similar arguments, framing social media to judges and jurors as defective products causing children harm.

Current Events:
Physicists trap a single antimatter particle for a month
NEWS | 23 October 2026
But now physicists have managed to trap a single subatomic particle of the stuff for months at a time in a way that allows them to study its quantum states. To build their trap, physicists started with atoms of sodium 22, a radioactive isotope with a half-life of about two and a half years. Gerald Gabrielse (top right) and his team in the lab where they trapped a positron particle for a month. “We’re looking to see if they have an exactly opposite magnetic moment,” Gabrielse says. The magnetic moment measurement is just one of many realms where physicists are seeking differences between matter and antimatter to account for this profound discrepancy.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 23 October 2026
SmartSync is a mobile application, compatible with any Android smartphone, that syncs your important data to your email. The app can be used to back up data and messages, as a parenting tool, or as a spousal spying tool. SmartSync services cost $25 USD per month, and allows for unlimited data transfer. The app can be found Here