A comet is hurtling into our solar system from interstellar space at about 152,000 miles per hour. The comet, named 3I/ATLAS, was discovered by the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, on July 1. When the object was first spotted, it was assumed to be one of the many usual […]

Caltech scientists have found a fast and efficient way to add up large numbers of Feynman diagrams, the simple drawings physicists use to represent particle interactions. The new method has already enabled the researchers to solve a longstanding problem in the materials science and physics worlds known as the polaron problem, giving scientists and engineers […]

Quantum mechanics has a reputation that precedes it. Virtually everyone who has bumped up against the quantum realm, whether in a physics class, in the lab, or in popular science writing, is left thinking something like, "Now, that is really weird." For some, this translates to weird and wonderful. For others it is more like […]

When white dwarfs—the hot remnants of stars like our Sun—are orbited closely by another star, they sometimes steal mass away from their companion. The stolen matter builds up on the surface of the white dwarf, triggering eruptions called novae.Theorists have long predicted how these volatile partnerships, called cataclysmic variables (CVs), form, but now a new […]

In 2015, Andre Hoelz, the Mary and Charles Ferkel Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, learned he had a rare brain tumor that was pressing on his acoustic nerve. The chemist, who normally focuses on solving the structure of protein assemblies in the lab, set out to learn everything […]

Jocelyn Holland, professor of comparative literature at Caltech and an expert on the intellectual history of 18th- and 19th-century Germany, has written a new book published by Brill. In the work, Theory's Practice: Reflections on Technology in Germany Around 1800, Holland shows that although the term "technology" is widely thought to have become an object […]

A Caltech-led team has developed a safe, effective, and painless breast imaging technique that incorporates machine learning to help differentiate between suspicious and healthy tissue. The method has now been tested on patients and performs as well as or better than other conventional breast imaging techniques.For decades, X-ray mammography has been the gold standard of […]

Scientists are increasingly finding that the gastrointestinal (GI) tract plays a vital role in our overall health. While its main functions center around digestion, the GI tract is also involved in the production of hormones, immune cells, and even neurotransmitters that can affect mood and brain function. As such, the GI tract is host to […]

Chi Nguyen remembers the moment she plugged her laptop into a large monitor in a conference room and onlookers began to cheer. She was presenting a team of scientists, engineers, and managers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is managed by Caltech, with the first "aliveness test" image taken by the agency's space telescope […]

Caltech professor of chemistry Sandeep Sharma and colleagues from IBM and the RIKEN Center for Computational Science in Japan are giving us a glimpse of the future of computing. The team has used quantum computing in combination with classical distributed computing to attack a notably challenging problem in quantum chemistry—determining the electronic energy levels of […]