Space & Physics: A century of quantum weirdness

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January 29 — This week, we're commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Challenger disaster and the 100th anniversary of the Schrödinger equation. Plus, the looming Artemis II crewed lunar mission, mind-blowing galactic discoveries, and much more. Enjoy! Thoughts? Questions? Let me know via e-mail (lbillings@sciam.com), X or Bluesky. —Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Physical Sciences

Top Stories

40 years after Challenger disaster, NASA faces safety fears on Artemis II Many of the team behind NASA's Artemis II mission were children 40 years ago, when the space shuttle Challenger disaster reshaped spaceflight Meghan Bartels

For its 100th birthday, the Schrödinger equation is getting a glow-up from quantum physicists A century ago, Erwin Schrödinger came up with an equation that says how the quantum world behaves. Now scientists are asking what happens when the observer is part of that world Joseph Howlett

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The biggest explosions in the universe, ranked From planet-scorching stellar outbursts to cataclysms so powerful they shiver the very fabric of spacetime, these are some of the biggest blasts our cosmos has to offer Phil Plait

NASA pushes ahead with 'wet' dress rehearsal for Artemis II moon mission A crucial test of NASA's upcoming crewed flight to the moon is set to take place as soon as Saturday, the agency said Jackie Flynn Mogensen

Back from the dead, a black hole is erupting after a 100-million-year hiatus Radio images captured this "cosmic volcano" being reborn at the heart of the galaxy J1007+3540 K. R. Callaway

JWST unveils most intricate map yet of cosmic dark matter Astronomers puzzled out minuscule distortions in images of faraway galaxies taken by JWST in order to chart the invisible Joseph Howlett

AI reveals 800 never-before-seen 'cosmic anomalies' in old Hubble images Scientists analyzed more than 100 million image cutouts from a Hubble Space Telescope archive and found hundreds of previously undiscovered objects Jackie Flynn Mogensen

Largest-ever 'superposition' supersizes Schrödinger's cat A record-breaking experiment shows that a cluster of thousands of atoms can act like a wave as well as a particle Elizabeth Gibney, Nature magazine

JWST spots most distant galaxy ever, pushing the limits of the observable universe The galaxy MoM-z14 could offer clues to what the universe looked like in its early infancy Jackie Flynn Mogensen

NASA gears up for a historic lunar flyby, AI gives stroke patients hope, and researchers discover the oldest known cave art What's on the road to the launch of NASA's Artemis II, how scientists are using artificial intelligence to help stroke patients speak, and what an Indonesian cave art discovery says about early human migration Kendra Pierre-Louis, Lee Billings, Sushmita Pathak, Kelso Harper, Alex Sugiura

How math can reveal lottery fraud In one day, 433 people won the Philippine lottery jackpot. What were the chances? Manon Bischoff

What We're Reading

Do you have ideas about how to improve America's space program? | Ars Technica The universe may be hiding a fundamentally unknowable quantum secret | New Scientist Is particle physics dead, dying or just hard? | Quanta Magazine

From the Archive

What's the Most Distant Galaxy? And Why Does It Matter? Record-breaking objects can tell us about the most powerful events in the cosmos—sometimes Phil Plait

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