Week in Science: A "magic potion" brings dead batteries back to life

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June 6—This week, a way to revive dead lithium-ion batteries, dust clouds from the Sahara hit Florida, and mathematicians tried to stump an AI (spoiler: they couldn't). Enjoy and have a great weekend! —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor

Top Stories

At Secret Math Meeting, Researchers Struggle to Outsmart AI The world's leading mathematicians were stunned by how adept artificial intelligence is at doing their jobs Lyndie Chiou

AI Found a 'Magic Potion' That Can Bring Dead Batteries Back to Life Electric vehicles leave behind mountains of dead lithium-ion batteries. A new "injection" brings them back to life You Xiaoying

Sahara Dust Clouds Are Heading to Florida and Beyond Clouds of dust blown off the Saharan Desert into the southeastern U.S. could affect local weather and make sunrises and sunsets particularly vivid Meghan Bartels

Our World Is Getting More Complicated. Here's the 19th-Century Math That Proves It Nothing in the cosmos is in equilibrium, which means entropy is on the rise Manon Bischoff

Are We Ready for Death in Space? NASA has quietly taken steps to prepare for a death in space. We need to ask how nations will deal with this inevitability now, as more people start traveling off the planet Peter Cummings

Bizarre Quantum Universe Even how matter exists in the first place is a mystery to physicists Andrea Gawrylewski

Mathematicians Solve Multidimensional Fruit-Slicing Dilemma A 40-year-old conjecture on shapes' cross sections is finally proven Max Springer

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What Causes Glaciers to Collapse like the Event That Buried a Swiss Village? Climate change and thawing permafrost play a role in destabilizing glaciers Jen Schwartz

SpaceX's Starbase Is Officially a City. Some Neighbors Aren't Thrilled Starbase, SpaceX's launch site turned company town in South Texas, faces local opposition from residents outside the city limits Paola Rosa-Aquino

The World Isn't Ready for the Mental Health Toll of Extreme Heat Temperatures are rising, and so are mental health risks Madhusree Mukerjee

These 'Real-Life Mermaid' Divers Have Remarkable Underwater Abilities—And Genetics The Haenyeo, an all-female group of divers on South Korea's Jeju Island, spend much of their lives underwater without equipment—a "superpower" that may be written into their DNA Gayoung Lee

Why This Hurricane Season Has Experts on Edge Predictions for an above-average number of storms, communities that are still recovering and cuts to the National Weather Service have meteorologists and other experts worried about this hurricane season Andrea Thompson

Engineered Viruses Make Neurons Glow and Treat Brain Disease Neuroscientists can now make precise genetic tweaks to the neurons that are most affected by brain diseases such as Parkinson's, Huntington's and ALS Allison Parshall

Human Intelligence Created the Climate Crisis—But It's Also the Solution Science communicator Hank Green explains how our species' unique intelligence got us into this climate mess—and how it will help us solve it Hank Green

This 'Tower of Worms' Is a Squirming Superorganism Scientists have captured the first videos of wild roundworms forming living, wriggling towers that behave as one big superorganism Jacek Krywko

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