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NASA found intriguing rocks on Mars, so where does that leave Mars Sample Return?

NASA's interim administrator Sean Duffy was fired up on Wednesday when he joined a teleconference to talk about new scientific findings that concerned the potential for life to have once existed on Mars. "This is exciting news," said Duffy about an arrow-shaped rock on Mars found by NASA's Perseverance rover. The rock contained chemical signatures and structures that could have been formed by ancient microbial life. The findings were intriguing, but not conclusive. Further study of the rocks in

Tonverk is Elektron’s new polyphonic sample mangler and groovebox

Elektron has built a cult-like following over the years with its unique and, at times, esoteric take on electronic musical instruments. On paper, Tonverk is a seemingly over-powered sampler that continues that tradition. It’s the rare piece of hardware capable of creating multisampled instruments on its own. It turns a single sample track into a nesting doll of multiple samples. And it’s loaded with an absolutely absurd amount of routing and audio processing features. Tonverk is certainly capabl

How We’ll Know for Sure If Microplastics Are Destroying Our Health

Researchers have found plastic in almost every corner of the human body, from our brains and poop to blood and testicles (at least it’s not making our stomachs crunch yet). Is this plastic contamination bad for us? While the answer to that question might seem like a no-brainer—and certainly no one is crazy enough to theorize that microplastics in breast milk are a good thing—there haven’t been any human trials to confirm that microplastics are detrimental to human health. Some research has simp

How to Find Out If Microplastics Are Actually Destroying Our Health

Researchers have found plastic in almost every corner of the human body, from our brains and poop to blood and testicles (at least it’s not making our stomachs crunch yet). Is this plastic contamination bad for us? While the answer to that question might seem like a no-brainer—and certainly no one is crazy enough to theorize that microplastics in breast milk are a good thing—there haven’t been any human trials to confirm that microplastics are detrimental to human health. Some research has simp

Monte Carlo Crash Course: Quasi-Monte Carlo

Monte Carlo Crash Course Quasi-Monte Carlo We’ve learned how to define and apply Monte Carlo integration—fundamentally, it’s the only tool we need. In the remaining chapters, we’ll explore ways to reduce variance and successfully sample difficult distributions. Variance & Correlation In chapter two, we determined that the variance of a Monte Carlo estimator is inversely proportional to its sample count. Empirically, we confirmed that our integrators’ expected error scaled with $$\frac{1}{\sq

Research roundup: 6 cool science stories we almost missed

It's a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we've featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we're experimenting with a monthly collection. June's list includes the final results from the Muon g-2 experiment, re-creating the recipe for Egyptian blue, embedding coded messages in ice bubbles, and why cats seem to have a marked preference for sleeping on thei

Tiny orange beads found by Apollo astronauts reveal Moon's explosive past

The Apollo astronauts didn't know what they'd find when they explored the surface of the moon, but they certainly didn't expect to see drifts of tiny, bright orange glass beads glistening among the otherwise monochrome piles of rocks and dust. The beads, each less than 1 mm across, formed some 3.3 to 3.6 billion years ago during volcanic eruptions on the surface of the then-young satellite. "They're some of the most amazing extraterrestrial samples we have," said Ryan Ogliore, an associate prof