• Current Issue
• Past Issues
• On the Bookshelf
• Science in the News

• About
• Subscribe
• Advertise
• Sigma Xi

SCIENCE IN THE NEWS WEEKLY

Gulf Blowout Preventer Finally Surfaces

The failed blowout preventer from BP's runaway oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was hauled to the surface over the weekend and will now be the subject of intense scrutiny to determine what went wrong with it.

In other technology news, scientists reported last week successfully building reliable small digital switches—an essential part of computer memory—that could shrink to a much smaller scale than is possible using conventional methods.

National Geographic visited the idea of reprocessing radioactive waste from nuclear power plants to generate more power. The controversial idea has it proponents and critics.

Meanwhile, the first "invisible" attack by hackers on two commercial quantum cryptographic systems was reported last week. Lasers were used to crack the encryption keys, leaving no trace of the hack.

Not everybody is happy about a wind farm on an island off the coast of Maine. Some say the turbines have brought "chest-thumping noise, questionable cost savings and frustrating stonewalling from wind farm managers" who claim complaints of the noise are exaggerated.

And Science News reported on a new study in which physicists outline construction of the smallest refrigerator yet. It's based on just a few particles and is capable of cooling to near absolute zero.