Forecasters recreate the weather that made D-Day possible - Popular Science

image: ProNet integrates AI directly into traditional atmospheric equations. This hybrid approach accurately predicts air pollution and corrects multi-day errors without violating the laws of physics, minimizing the unfeasible guesses often made by pure AI systems. Every day, millions of people rely on air quality forecasts to protect their health, while cities depend on them to trigger emergency pollution responses and emission controls. Yet delivering forecasts that are both pinpoint-accurate and scientifically explainable has long posed a daunting dilemma. Traditional chemical transport models simulate atmospheric physics and chemistry by calculating governing equations but are severely constrained by unpredictable human emissions. Meanwhile, purely data-driven artificial intelligence (AI) has advanced rapidly, but pure AI models lack physical common sense: they frequently produce erratic, physically unfeasible concentration swings, fail during unprecedented weather extremes, and operate as opaque black boxes that cannot diagnose why errors occur.

A particle does not have to pass through a magnetic field to be influenced by it. That surprising feature of quantum physics has now been recreated by researchers at the University of Oxford, who used a hybrid quantum computer to demonstrate how an invisible magnetic influence can bring a simulated particle's movement to a complete stop. The experiment reproduced a phenomenon known as the Aharonov-Bohm effect, in which a charged particle traveling around a region containing magnetic flux experiences a measurable change in its quantum state, even though its path never takes it through the magnetic field itself.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher Isaiah Santistevan led the development of three-dimensional simulations exploring how a nuclear device could deflect or disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth. Credit: Blaise Douros/LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers are developing three-dimensional simulations to examine how a nuclear device could be used to deflect or potentially disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth.

Milky Way’s first microblazar candidate sits 12,000 light-years away, offering a rare ground-level lab for studying relativistic jetsA black hole 12,000 light-years away is firing a jet of plasma almost directly toward Earth. At that distance, no known or expected danger to Earth has been identified by the researchers or the institutions involved. What astronomers have actually found is rarer and more interesting than a threat. Researchers have identified IRAS 18293-0941 as a compelling candidate for the Milky Way’s first microblazar, a class of object that gives astrophysicists a close-up laboratory for studying some of the most violent physics in the galaxy. What Astronomers FoundThe discovery centers on a binary system whose black hole expels plasma jets at close to three-quarters the speed of light, pointed almost directly toward Earth. The system pairs a hot, massive star with a black hole that completes a full orbit roughly every 11.38 days. Material drawn from the companion star feeds the black hole, and some of that matter gets expelled outward as opposing jets traveling at approximately three-quarters the speed of light. Terminology matters here.