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One of the strangest facts in computer science is that it's really hard to generate true random numbers. For a computer, anyway. I can do it just fine: 173, 401, 530. That's right off the top of my head, true randomness. Scientists: If you need a random number, please contact me by email, night or day. However, a multi-institutional group of researchers now reports generating "demonstrated certified randomness" using a 56-qubit quantum computer. A study in Frontiers in Marine Science reports evidence of deep ecosystem consequences following the disappearance of great white sharks from False Bay, South Africa. And in actually great medical news, a team at McMaster University discovered a new class of antibiotics.

Scientists have debunked the belief that using tools is unique to mammals and birds, after documenting tropical fish that smash shellfish against rocks to open and eat the meat, in a fascinating new study published in the journal Coral Reefs on 26 March 2025.

Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead.

When monitoring the health of mammal populations, scientists often use camera traps to observe the animals in their habitats. But weasels are so sneaky they're rarely caught on camera—leaving scientists with questions about this population of predators.

You may have heard of the fantastic-sounding "dark side of the genome." This poorly studied fraction of DNA, known as heterochromatin, makes up around half of your genetic material, and scientists are now starting to unravel its role in your cells.

Hydroacoustic signals captured by the world's international nuclear monitoring system suggest an underwater landslide may have broken communications cables and disrupted internet traffic in west African countries for several weeks in March 2024.

Scientists have long sought to unravel the mysteries of strange metals—materials that defy conventional rules of electricity and magnetism. Now, a team of physicists at Rice University has made a breakthrough in this area using a tool from quantum information science. Their study, published recently in Nature Communications, reveals that electrons in strange metals become more entangled at a crucial tipping point, shedding new light on the behavior of these enigmatic materials. The discovery could pave the way for advances in superconductors with the potential to transform energy use in the future.

Early Friday, a major 7.7 magnitude earthquake that originated near Mandalay, Myanmar, shook the Earth as far as Bangkok, about 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) away.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently boarded one of the UK's four nuclear-armed submarines for a photo call as part of his attempts to demonstrate the UK's defense capabilities as tensions with Russia continue.

The Melsonby hoard is a remarkable collection of more than 800 Iron-Age metal artifacts, which was found in a field near Melsonby, North Yorkshire, in December 2021.

Congratulations to Brian Thornton, winner of The Conversation Prize for writers.

Adelle Hulsmeier’s project uses student films to help police tackle complex crimes.

Six weeks of research-backed analysis, expert advice and challenges delivered straight to your inbox.

This series offers insightful new ways to think about and interpret classic books and artworks.

Dubai has many images. Being a hub for international research probably isn’t one, yet

What Universal Impact has learnt from a year of producing the Research Reach Roundup newsletter

The latest Independent Social Research Foundation conference heard how refugees have died after becoming trapped at the border between Poland and Belarus

Alfred Hermida: ‘The scholars who write for The Conversation are taking on journalistic practices, guided and mentored by our team of professional journalists’

The Conversation UK, Curtis Brown and Faber are pleased to announce our three judges for The Conversation Prize for writers: Miriam Frankel, senior science editor at The Conversation UK, Priya Atwal, historian…

The 3MT® competition was sponsored by The Conversation’s Universal Impact subsidiary

A new study in the Farmington River watershed shows that groundwater seeps can release 20% of dissolved emissions into the atmosphere before the water joins streams.

Wells overpumping groundwater could be forcing rivers to seep underground, a new study shows. Regions with intensive irrigation activities are at the most risk.

Low-level clouds over the oceans, extensively studied for their role in climate change, are re-examined from a new perspective that applies machine learning to radar observations.

The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides. There are some reports today that another mining related landslide occurred in the Morowali area of Indonesia yesterday. There are few details in media reports, but videos have been posted that appear […]

After an onslaught of funding cuts, firings, and cancelled programs as a result of Trump administration actions, scientists in the United States are feeling targeted. That’s according to the results of a poll of 1,200 U.S. scientists, published by Nature.

Various U.S. federal agencies sent a 36-point survey to researchers abroad who receive U.S. funding, asking questions related to the Trump administration’s priorities. The questions cover topics such as “eradicating anti-Christian bias” and defending against “gender ideology,” and asked researchers to disclose ties to “entities associated with communist, socialist or totalitarian parties.”

During a voyage off the east coast of Africa, researchers collected detailed measurements of massive swirling currents that affect regional ocean conditions and fisheries.

Wild animals expend 76,000 gigajoules of energy—the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of monsoons or floods—shaping our planet’s terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems.

Las estrategias pensadas para ciudades enteras para hacer frente al cambio climático pueden beneficiarse de los conocimientos de los vulcanólogos, que llevan mucho tiempo adaptando la información y la comunicación sobre riesgos a las comunidades locales.

A new commentary calls for a better understanding of the impacts of climate change and anthropogenic emissions on long-term trends of the middle and upper atmosphere through enhanced observations and monitoring capabilities.

Open access notables New coasts emerging from the retreat of Northern Hemisphere marine-terminating glaciers in the twenty-first century, Kavan et al., Nature Climate Change: Accelerated climate warming has caused the majority of marine-terminating glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere to retreat substantially during the twenty-first century. While glacier retreat and changes in mass balance are widely studied on a global scale, the impacts of deglaciation on adjacent coastal geomorphology are often overlooked and therefore poorly understood. Here we examine changes in proglacial zones of marine-terminating glaciers across the Northern Hemisphere to quantify the

This is a re-post from the Climate Brink Last September the Washington Post published an article about a new paper in Science by Emily Judd and colleagues. The WaPo article was detailed and nuanced, but led with the figure below, adapted from the paper:

This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Wang Zhongying, chief national expert, China Energy Transformation Programme of the Energy Research Institute, and Kaare Sandholt, chief international expert, China Energy Transformation Programme of the Energy Research Institute China will need to install around 10,000 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar capacity to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, according to new Chinese government-endorsed research. This huge energy transition – with the technologies currently standing at 

A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 16, 2025 thru Sat, March 22, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category and number of articles shared: Climate Change Impacts (14 articles) Global sea level rose faster than expected in 2024, according to NASA analysis  Ocean water expands as it warms, researchers said. 

Open access notables The severe 2020 coral bleaching event in the tropical Atlantic linked to marine heatwaves, Rodrigues et al., Communications Earth & Environment: Marine heatwaves can amplify the vulnerabilities of regional marine ecosystems and jeopardise local economies and food resources. Here, we show that marine heatwaves in the tropical Atlantic have increased in frequency, intensity, duration, and spatial extent. Marine heatwaves are 5.1 times more frequent and 4.7 times more intense since the records started in 1982, with the 10 most extreme summers/falls in terms of marine heatwave cumulative intensity and spatial extension occurring in the last two decades. The extreme

Up until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of "Climate Fresk" and at a guess, this will also be the case for many of you. I stumbled upon it in the self-service training catalog for employees at the company I work at in Germany where it was announced as a 3-hours workshop called "Klima Puzzle" (Climate Puzzle). Intrigued, I signed up and was one of 7 colleagues to be led through what turned out to be quite an interesting experience. After the workshop, I spend some time browsing the Climate Fresk website and then signed up for a training to become a "Climate Fresker" myself. This allows me to lead people through a Climate Fresk, which I now "only" need to find some time for! The background story Climate Fresk

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah Wesseler (Image credi

A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 9, 2025 thru Sat, March 15, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category and number of articles shared: Climate Policy and Politics (10 articles) `We`re losing our environmental history`: The future of government information under Trump  The administration’s w

Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is waste heat from industrial activity the reason the planet is warming? Waste heat’s contribution to global warming is a small fraction of that brought about by carbon dioxide. Waste heat comes from the thermal energy released by human energy use, such as when power plants burn coal or combustion engines burn gasoline. Dividing the total amount of

Open access notables Would Adding the Anthropocene to the Geologic Time Scale Matter?, McCarthy et al., AGU Advances: The extraordinary fossil fuel-driven outburst of consumption and production since the mid-twentieth century has fundamentally altered the way the Earth System works. Although humans have impacted their environment for millennia, justification for a new interval of geologic time lies in the radical shift in the geologic record that marks this “Great Acceleration” of the human enterprise. The rejection of a proposal to define the beginning of the Anthropocene epoch with a “golden spike” in varved sediments from Crawford Lake, Canada, means that we officially we still live in the H