Science Editor, Lonic
Ivan holds a doctorate in condensed matter physics and worked on superconducting qubit error correction before moving into science journalism.
The open questions catalogued from Paul Erdős's vast output are unusually well suited to the kind of search that language models are good at, and unusually poorly suited as evidence about deep mathematical reasoning.
Tens of thousands of tracked objects and a much larger population of untrackable fragments now share low Earth orbit with an expanding satellite population. The maths of that crowding is getting harder to ignore.
A new claim of ambient-pressure, room-temperature superconductivity has generated familiar excitement — and familiar scepticism. The replication process itself is the more interesting story.
Warmer summers are altering snowpack behaviour on the world's highest mountains. The consequences show up first as timing, and timing is what avalanche safety depends on.
Most of the extra energy trapped by greenhouse gases ends up in the ocean, not the air. That measurement is unusually steady, and unusually informative about what comes next.
Biomechanical sensors, force plates and GPS tracking now shape training decisions across elite athletics. Coaches and scientists increasingly agree the technology has clear limits.
Similar magnitudes produce wildly different death tolls. The difference is almost entirely engineering, drills and building codes enforced over decades.
A more precise descendant of the original CRISPR technique has moved from laboratory demonstration to authorised treatment. The gap between the two remains a useful lesson in how gene editing actually gets to patients.
As the 2026 World Cup is played across venues with punishing midsummer heat, medical staff and players' unions are pushing harder than ever for scheduling changes that organisers have resisted for years.
Transceivers and airbags save lives. But post-incident analysis keeps finding that the fatal error happened hours earlier, in a decision nobody registered as a decision.
Fusion has cleared the physics threshold of net energy gain more than once now. Turning that into a power station is a separate, and much harder, problem.
NASA's return to the Moon has slipped repeatedly. Here is a sober look at which delays are routine engineering caution and which point to deeper structural problems.
Error correction finally works well enough to matter. That does not mean your encryption breaks tomorrow — here is the honest state of play.