The Science of 2024's Epic Solar Eclipse, the Last for a Generation

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January 4, 2024

Happy New Year! I hope you, like me, had a restful and joyous Yuletide break. Now that 2024 is upon us, however, it's time to reflect on some of the past year's highlights—and to discuss some of the exciting events this coming year holds. Our lead story is about one of the most hotly anticipated celestial happenings of 2024—a total solar eclipse in early April that will sweep across a huge, population-dense swath of North America, offering a once-in-a-generation spectacle for scientists and the public alike. Our story discusses the unique eclipse-centric science planned for the occasion, some of which you can even directly participate in. Elsewhere, we have articles on 2023's best space images, a breakthrough in estimating stellar ages, the strange deep-space destination of India's latest space probe, the biggest unsolved problem in computer science, and much more. Enjoy!

Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Space & Physics @LeeBillings

Astronomy The Science of 2024's Epic Solar Eclipse, the Last for a Generation Unique studies of gravity waves, atmospheric holes and dazzling coronal displays will accompany April's total solar eclipse across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada By Jonathan O'Callaghan

Astronomy Behold--the Best Space Images of 2023 This year's most interesting space images include infrared views of galactic "bones," an asteroid's double moon, Jupiter's giant polar vortex, and more By Phil Plait

Cognition Stop Asking If the Universe Is a Computer Simulation We will never know if we live in a computer simulation; here is a more interesting question By Simon Duan

Computing The Most Important Unsolved Problem in Computer Science Here's a look at the million-dollar math problem at the heart of computation By Jack Murtagh

Particle Physics A Hunt for Sterile Neutrinos Could Unlock Deep Cosmic Secrets The Short-Baseline Neutrino Program will try to determine once and for all whether sterile neutrinos are real By Don Lincoln

Astrophysics Stars Don't Slow Down with Age like Astronomers Thought Middle-aged stars hit cruise control, stifling their magnetic fields and resisting the slowdown that scientists expected By Zack Savitsky

Astronomy The Winter Solstice Has a Surprising Secret How can the December solstice have the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere but neither the earliest sunset nor the latest sunrise? Earth's orbital quirks offer answers By Phil Plait

Space Exploration India's Aditya-L1 Space Probe Heads for Gravitational 'Island' Aditya-L1 will join more than four active spacecraft at the first Lagrange point, a nearly stable region in the gravitational field between Earth and the sun By Tom Metcalfe

Culture Watch the Best Scientific American TikToks of 2023 Scientific American's TikTok delivers piping-hot science in bite-sized videos By Kelso Harper

Mathematics Podcasts of the Year: Cleo, the Mysterious Math Menace In 2013 a new user named Cleo took an online math forum by storm with unproved answers. Today she's an urban legend. But who was she? A 2023 editor's pick.  By Tulika Bose,Allison Parshall,Carin Leong | 12:47

Geology Calling Our Times the 'Anthropocene Epoch' Matters Dearly to You The name Anthropocene means human activity is profoundly changing our environment, and you'll have to plan for those changes By Naomi Oreskes

QUOTE OF THE DAY "Something was deeply not what we expected. Basically, halfway through the lives of stars, their rotation fundamentally changes." Jennifer van Saders, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii, on new work revealing that a star's spin can be a poor proxy for stellar age.

FROM THE ARCHIVE A Partial Eclipse Is Interesting; a Total Eclipse Is Mind-Blowing Photos don't do it justice—it's perhaps the most spectacular natural phenomenon you'll ever see By Edwin L. Turner | August 2017

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