Science

This story is part of our Cosmic Perspective special, in which we confront the staggering vastness of the cosmos and our place in it. Read the rest of the series here. We tend to think of space-time as the underlying structure of the universe. But whether it really is fundamental or emerges from something deeper is a question that keeps physicists up at night. “It’s not just a philosophical question that you discuss over a beer,” says Marika Taylor at the University of Birmingham in the UK. “It is actually something that comes into the calculations that people do.” The best place to start is quantum mechanics, which describes the behaviour of subatomic particles. Famously counterintuitive, one of the theory’s core tenets is that connections between particles can trans...

Columbia Climate School’s Earth Month Showcase last spring celebrated student research on sustainability and climate change. The event featured presentations from Columbia’s Office of Sustainability on the progress for Plan 2030 (a 10-year strategic plan for Columbia’s New York campuses to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050); remarks from the Climate School staff; and a poster session, where 33 Columbia students shared their experience of conducting research and working on climate, environment and sustainability-related projects. In the 2023-2024 academic year, the Climate School provided over $150,000 in funding to support undergraduate, graduate and PhD students engaged in collaborative research, internships, research assistantships and fieldwork. The showcase served as an opportunit...

This tuna-inspired bot borrows a clever trick from the real fishZhonglu Lin et al. (2024) A tuna-shaped robot takes advantage of the real fish’s secret for speed and nimbleness: selectively folding or sticking out its fins, a feature that could improve aquatic robot designs. Tuna are some of the ocean’s fastest swimmers, thanks in part to the way they retract or fold their fins to reduce drag. Zhonglu Lin at Xiamen University in China and his colleagues investigated how such fins could make robots more agile. They built a tuna-shaped robot that was half a metre long. It could be controlled with a motor in its head, another in its dorsal fin on its back and a third in the caudal fin at the end of its tail. The researchers filmed their robot as it swam across a pool...

With rising sea levels, extreme waves and storm surges, Venice is notoriously vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. A Sustainable Serenissima: Water and the Future of Venice program provides undergraduate students the opportunity to explore ways in which contemporary Venice confronts sustainability challenges and develops resilience. Studying in Venice offers a unique opportunity for students to experience lessons coming alive, says Jenna Lawrence, a lecturer at Columbia Climate School and lead instructor for the Venice class. “Venetians have been grappling with sustainable development for over a thousand years, actively maintaining their urban lagoon ecosystem to ensure that the wetlands and mudflats continue to soften storms, provide food, keep rising tides at bay and sto...

We tend not to dwell on the fact that we exist in three dimensions. Forwards-back, left-right, up-down; these are the axes on which we navigate the world. When we try to imagine something else, it typically conjures images from the wildest science fiction – of portals in the fabric of space-time and parallel worlds. Yet serious physicists have long been spellbound by the prospect of extra dimensions. For all their intangibility, they promise to resolve several big questions about the deepest workings of the universe. Besides, they can’t be ruled out simply because they are difficult to imagine and even harder to observe. “There’s no reason why it has to be three,” says Georges Obied at the University of Oxford. “It could have been two; it could have been four or 10.” ...