Rahul Rao, Popular Science

Rahul Rao

Popular Science

New York, NY, United States

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Recent:
  • Unknown
Past:
  • Popular Science

Past articles by Rahul:

DART left an asteroid crime scene. This mission is on deck to investigate it.

Hera, the next asteroid-deflection space mission, aims to gather recon on the DART test's collision with Dimorphos. → Read More

People may have been riding horses as early as 5,000 years ago

Telltale markings on ancient human bones indicate that a group of people known as the Yamnaya may have ridden horses in 3000 BCE. → Read More

We might soon lose a full second of our lives

Our next leap second may be a negative one, meaning the world's clocks will skip one second into the future to account for the Earth spinning faster. → Read More

Engineers finally peeked inside a deep neural network

Using 19th-century math, a team of engineers revealed what happens inside neural networks they've created. The calculations are familiar. → Read More

Moondust could chill out our overheated Earth, some scientists predict

Placing billions of kilograms of moondust between Earth and the sun could reduce incoming light by almost 2 percent per year. → Read More

Earth’s natural air-scrubbing system works better when it’s wetter

Rocks remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere when it’s warm and rainy, in a process that's like nature's air filter. → Read More

The best—and worst—places to shelter after a nuclear blast

Simulations of a shockwave from a nuclear bomb blast show the best and worst places to take shelter in your home. → Read More

Physicists figured out a recipe to make titanium stardust on Earth

An experiment on a rocket helped engineers and physicists create grains full of a strong material called titanium carbide. → Read More

UV radiation might be behind the planet’s biggest mass extinction

UV-B radiation in fossilized pollen grains give a clue to how the end-of-Permian mass extinction went down on Earth. → Read More

ISS astronauts are building objects that couldn’t exist on Earth

MIT researchers created a device that fills silicone skins with resin to create shapes that would collapse in our planet's gravity. → Read More

Time doesn’t have to be exact—here’s why

The leap second helps adjust the world's clocks for little differences in the Earth's rotation and day length. But most timekeepers and regular people won't miss it. → Read More

What the Energy Department’s laser breakthrough means for nuclear fusion

Scientists at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used 192 lasers to generate more energy than they put in. → Read More

Oldest DNA ever sampled paints a lush portrait of a lost Arctic world

eDNA, or environmental DNA, has helped reconstruct an entire ecosystem in northern Greenland, dating before the ice ages. → Read More

The small, mighty, world-changing transistor turns 75

Transistors are everywhere, powering our computers, everyday gadgets like smartphones, and even spacecraft. → Read More

The most awesome aerospace innovations of 2022

Game-changing new developments in space, a “Parallel Reality” on the ground, and more innovations are the Best of What’s New. → Read More

Two meteorite mysteries are helping astronomers investigate the origins of life

Results from early chemical analyses of the Winchcombe meteorite and 200 Mars-borne meteors reveal water and ancient amino acids. → Read More

Magnets might be the future of nuclear fusion

National Ignition Facility scientists are lighting up their fusion cylinder within the flux of a strong magnetic field. → Read More

This far-off galaxy is probably shooting us with oodles of ghostly particles

The origin of neutrinos in galaxy NGC 1068 is not what researchers expected, because it is so different from a previously identified source. → Read More

To set the record straight: Nothing can break the speed of light

The laws of special relativity say that there's nothing in the universe that's faster than the speed of light. So why do gamma-ray bursts seem to break that limit? → Read More

Geologists are searching for when the Earth took its first breath

In a search for the Earth's first breath, geologists tried to piece together a timeline of when oxygen levels rose and dove in the ancient atmosphere. → Read More