Week in Science: Are dire wolves back from extinction?

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April 11—This week, award-winning theoretical physicist Gerard 't Hooft reflects on the field of quantum mechanics. Plus, a biotech companies claims to have resurrected the dire wolf, and get to know our galaxy's rogue planets. Enjoy and find even more top news below. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor

Top Stories

Quantum Physics Is on the Wrong Track, Says Breakthrough Prize Winner Gerard 't Hooft After netting the world's highest-paying science award, preeminent theoretical physicist Gerard 't Hooft reflects on his legacy and the future of physics Lee Billings

Scientists Identify a Brain Structure That Filters Consciousness Our conscious awareness may be governed by a structure deep in the brain Smriti Mallapaty, Nature magazine

Did Scientists Actually De-Extinct the Dire Wolf? Colossal Bioscience says it has "de-extincted" the dire wolf, but other scientists disagree and say more important conservation science is being lost in all the hype Andrea Thompson

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How Many Rogue Planets Roam the Milky Way? According to new simulations, many, even most, planets get ejected from their star early in their history Phil Plait

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Mathematicians Solve Decades-Old Spinning Needle Puzzle For a long time, the Kakeya conjecture, which involves rotating an infinitely narrow needle, kept mathematicians guessing—until now Manon Bischoff

Dennis Gaitsgory, Who Proved Part of Math's Grand Unified Theory, Wins Breakthrough Prize By solving part of the Langlands program, a mathematical proof that was long thought to be unachievable, Dennis Gaitsgory snags a prestigious Breakthrough Prize Manon Bischoff

Black Holes May Be 'Supermazes' of Many-Dimensional Strings Physicists think the insides of black holes may be complex mazes of tangled strings in higher dimensions Clara Moskowitz

This More Than 380-Year-Old Trick Can Crack Some Modern Encryption A little math from the 1600s can make what people send to a printer more vulnerable Manon Bischoff

Meet the Fluffy, Funky and Fabulous Native Bees That Call the U.S. Home Scientists estimate there are about 4,000 species of native bees in the U.S.—and they're both cooler and ecologically more important than honeybees Meghan Bartels

FEMA to Halt Billions in Grants for Disaster Protection, Internal Memo Says An internal FEMA memo says the agency is canceling future and existing grants that help states and tribes prepare for floods, tornadoes and other disasters Thomas Frank, E&E News

Denisovan Fossil Shows Enigmatic Human Cousins Lived from Siberia to Subtropics The third confirmed location of extinct hominins known as Denisovans shows these human cousins adapted to an impressive range of environments Cody Cottier

Google, X and Facebook Are Modern-Day Tobacco Companies Just as tobacco companies knew they were poisoning people, today's social media titans knowingly poison our politics, peddling lies and stoking angry divides for profit David Robert Grimes

Trump's Cornell Funding Freeze Could Make U.S. Troops Less Safe Cornell is being slammed with stop-work orders that will seriously impact department of defense research linked to the Air Force and military safety, sources tell Scientific American Stephanie Pappas

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