science

Topics and developments in science and medicine, presented by Futurism.

A New Image of Black Hole Magnetic Fields Reveals a Stunning, Ultra-Detailed Structure
For decades, black holes have represented the ultimate frontier of observational astronomy: regions so extreme that even light cannot escape, where physics bends into unfamiliar shapes and our best theories are pushed to their absolute limits. Yet each year, astronomers take one step closer to transforming the unseeable into the observable. The latest achievement is nothing short of astonishing: scientists have produced the most detailed image ever made of the magnetic fields swirling around a supermassive black hole.
By Holianyk Ihor2 months ago in Futurism
The First Evidence of “Pulsating” Emission from a Black Hole’s Accretion Disk
For decades, astronomers have observed mysterious flickers, flares, and quasi-periodic oscillations coming from black hole systems. These rhythmic bursts of radiation—especially in X-rays—have inspired hundreds of theories but offered few firm answers. Were they turbulence? Magnetic reconnection? Random instabilities? Or something deeper, tied to the very structure of spacetime near a black hole?
By Holianyk Ihor2 months ago in Futurism
The Light-Speed AI Revolution: How Photonic Chips Could Make Smart Devices Faster and Cooler
Intro / Lede Imagine your phone running a powerful AI model without draining battery, or a tiny gadget that recognizes voice, images and learns on the fly — all while consuming a fraction of today’s power. That’s the real promise behind photonic AI chips: using light (photons) instead of electrons to do the heavy math. If industry and labs turn promise into products, the way we build and use AI could flip fast.
By Sebastian De Lima2 months ago in Futurism
A New Idea Takes Shape: Dark Matter Might Be Superfluid — and Early Observations Are Starting to Hint at It
Every so often, astronomy produces a theory that feels almost too bold to take seriously at first glance. Yet these are precisely the ideas that sometimes transform our understanding of the Universe. One such proposal is now regaining momentum: dark matter, the mysterious substance shaping galaxies and cosmic structures, might not behave like a vast cloud of cold, inert particles after all. Instead, it could enter a superfluid state under the right conditions.
By Holianyk Ihor2 months ago in Futurism
A New Candidate for a Dark-Matter-Free Galaxy — and Why It Challenges Modern Cosmology
For decades, dark matter has been treated as one of the fundamental building blocks of the Universe. According to the dominant ΛCDM (Lambda Cold Dark Matter) model, every galaxy—large or small—should be embedded in a massive halo of invisible, non-luminous matter. This dark halo is not a minor detail; it is a core element of the structure of the cosmos. It dictates how galaxies form, how they rotate, how they merge, and how their stars and clusters behave over billions of years.
By Holianyk Ihor2 months ago in Futurism
The World’s First Ever Hotel in Space is Set to Open in 2027 with Gyms, Restaurants and Bars
The dream of staying in space is about to become a reality as the world’s first hotel in orbit is scheduled to open in 2027. This hotel will not just be a small capsule or a temporary station for astronauts. Instead, it will be a full-scale hotel designed for tourists, offering gyms, restaurants, bars, and entertainment, allowing people to live comfortably in space while enjoying breathtaking views of Earth. The space hotel is being developed by a private aerospace company that specializes in commercial space travel. Its goal is to make space tourism more accessible and to offer an experience unlike anything on Earth. Guests will have the opportunity to float in zero gravity, watch the sunrise from orbit, and enjoy the unique sensation of living in a completely different environment. The hotel will have multiple modules connected together, each designed for different purposes.
By Kashif Wazir2 months ago in Futurism
A New World in the Shadows: Uranus Gains a Newly Discovered Moon, S/2025 U1
For decades, Uranus seemed like one of the quietest and least explored giants in our Solar System. Its pale-blue disk, distant and dim, concealed only a modest collection of known moons—until now. In 2025, astronomers announced a remarkable discovery: a previously unseen miniature satellite orbiting Uranus. The moon, currently designated S/2025 U1, is tiny, elusive, and scientifically promising. Despite its minuscule size—no more than 8 to 10 kilometers across—it adds an important new piece to the complex and dynamic architecture of Uranus’s moon system.
By Holianyk Ihor2 months ago in Futurism
Euclid Has Found Hidden Giant Threads of the Cosmic Web — And They Are Challenging Our Models of the Universe
For decades, cosmologists have suspected that the Universe is woven together by an enormous and invisible scaffold: a vast network of filaments, bridges, knots, and voids known collectively as the cosmic web. This web is not a poetic metaphor. It is the real, physical structure of the cosmos on the largest scales—hundreds of millions of light-years across—shaped by dark matter, threaded by hot gas, and lit here and there by strings of galaxies.
By Holianyk Ihor2 months ago in Futurism
Stereo and Crimes of the Future
"Jomkin suggests that there must evolve a novel sexuality for a new species of man." — Crimes of the Future Before he became the cinematic master of body horror, David Cronenberg was an experimental student filmmaker who turned out works very much in line with the same sort of fixations explored almost exclusively by J.G. Ballard, whose Crash he later adapted into a film, in 1997. His early films, his first two, Stereo (1969) and Crimes of the Future (1970), explore film technique in documenting the huge, yawning architectural environment of an unspecified hospital or research facility, relegating the performers of the film to almost being secondary actors in a drama defined by geometrical shape—relegating them to the roles of insectile life, pursuing strange, even inscrutable actions, ostensibly being filmed by the watchful, clinical, and coldly detached robotic eye of the viewer, who becomes the de facto research assistant to the director, who seems to have made this film by asking his performers to improvise within the framework of derangement. What was he exploring? one wonders. The environment itself dwarfs the humanity of the filmic subjects, overpowering them in its specter of geometrical dominance and dimension.
By Tom Baker2 months ago in Futurism
Space Medicine Aboard the Station: How Astronauts Stay Healthy Beyond Earth
Life on an orbital space station is far more than breathtaking views and scientific breakthroughs. For astronauts, living in microgravity is a full-body experiment—one that never stops. Every minute spent in orbit reshapes the human body, changes how organs function, and challenges the limits of our biology. That’s why space medicine has become one of the most crucial, innovative, and fascinating branches of modern science.
By Holianyk Ihor2 months ago in Futurism
Sports and Exercise in Space: How Astronauts Stay Fit Beyond Earth
When most people imagine life in space, they picture astronauts floating gracefully in a state of weightlessness, drifting between control panels while gazing at the blue glow of Earth through the station window. But behind these cinematic visuals lies a tough physical reality: the human body is not designed for life without gravity. Muscles shrink, bones weaken, and even the heart begins to lose strength.
By Holianyk Ihor2 months ago in Futurism
The Crescent Planet: A World with a Permanent Terminator Line
Imagine a world where the sun never rises and never sets. A world where one hemisphere burns beneath an unmoving star while the other drowns in eternal night. Between them lies a narrow ring of twilight—an endless borderland where day and night touch but never mingle.
By Holianyk Ihor2 months ago in Futurism