Science

For over a decade, floating cranes have been lowering a strange cargo some 3000 metres under the Mediterranean Sea. The objects look otherworldly: large, shiny spheres crammed with electronics. They are, in fact, detectors for a machine called KM3NeT, designed to search for one of the most mysterious fundamental particles. The machine is still several years from completion, so Paschal Coyle got quite a shock when, in 2023, he spotted a dramatic signal in its preliminary data. It was a neutrino, as expected, but one unlike anything ever seen before. “When I first tried looking at this event, my program crashed,” says Coyle, a physicist at the Centre for Particle Physics of Marseille, France. KM3NeT had detected a neutrino from space that had about 35 times more en...

Columbia mourns the loss of Edward Botwinick ’56CC, BS’58 and emeritus member of the LDEO Board, who passed away Jan. 24, 2025. Botwinick was an IT entrepreneur, a pioneer in the area of time-division multiplexing and a strong supporter of Columbia University and Columbia Football. Botwinick received his BA in physics from Columbia College in 1956 and his BS in electrical engineering in 1958. He began his career working for US Semiconductor in 1958 and co-founded Silicon Transistor Corp. in 1960. From 1963 to 1967, he served as president and principal shareholder of Quantum Inc., a tape drive and scalable file storage manufacturer. In 1969, Botwinick helped found the data communications firm Timeplex, Inc., which became a leading provider of T1-based networks. For decades, T-1 ba...

On 15 September 2022, Science published the Research Article “Structural basis for strychnine activation of human bitter taste receptor TAS2R46” by W. Xu et al. (1). On 22 November 2022, an Editorial Expression of Concern alerted readers to concerns regarding fig. S10D (1). The authors have now corrected the paper, and the Editorial Expression of Concern has been replaced by an Erratum (3). As described in the Erratum, the authors repeated bioluminescence energy transfer experiments that were the basis for figs. S9, C to F, and S10D. The new data did not provide strong functional support for the structure-based suggestion of precoupling between TAS2R46 and the G protein gustducin. In the corrected version of the Research Article, Xiaoling Cao is no longer an author; figs. S9, C to F, and S...

Optical fibre connected to a dilution refrigeratorHarsh Rathee/Department of Physics Photographs accompanying most scientific papers might politely be called “functional”. But this collection of images from Imperial College London’s research photography competition proves that research can be beautiful. The top image, by Harsh Rathee of the physics department, shows an optical fibre connected to a dilution refrigerator, a device that creates a temperature a thousandth that of the vacuum of space. By observing how light interacts with sound waves at this incredibly low temperature, researchers can explore the unique properties of matter at the quantum level. Liquid GoldAnna Curran/Department of Mathematics The above entry is from Anna Curran of the maths department, wh...

El Chaltén is a village inside Argentina’s Los Glaciares National Park. The remote park is home to 48 glaciers, with some trailheads starting in town. Located among shops, restaurants and hotels on one of El Chaltén’s main streets is photographer Alex DeMets’ La Lenga Art Gallery.  DeMets has managed the gallery and displayed his work there for the last three years, after spending the previous six years traveling and photographing South America. Originally hailing from the American Midwest, DeMets started traveling full-time to pursue his photographic career nearly ten years ago. Since then, he has completed just two dozen or so final images, nearly all of which can only be viewed in-person at his gallery, since he rarely shares them on the internet. In an interview with GlacierHub, ...