This Week’s NOVA Next Feature
An unexplained orbit launched astronomers on a hunt for the mysterious planet Vulcan some 150 years ago. Read the excerpt from The Hunt for Vulcan: …And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe by Thomas Levenson.
In other news:
- Want to make a luxury cruise liner fast? Use two shipyards, then join the pieces together .
- Immunotherapy drugs used for cancer could also fight Alzheimer’s.
- Hate going to the dentist? You’d better keep the millions of microbes in your mouth happy.
- Marvin Minsky, a pioneer in artificial intelligence, died Sunday night in Boston. Don’t miss our exclusive interview with Minsky, conducted in 2010.
- A professional human “Go” player has been defeated by a computer for the first time.
- Math says that there’s no way these conspiracy theories are real.
- Zika is poised to explode. Here’s what you should know about the latest epidemic.
- What really causes cavities?
What We’re Reading
- Physicists have engineered a way to make “identical twin” snowflakes . [The New York Times]
- More evidence is emerging for the idea that Alzheimer’s may be transmissible . [Nature News]
- Scientists have homed in on a gene that’s the biggest risk factor for schizophrenia thus far. [WBUR]
- In not too long, New York plans to temporarily slow water headed for Niagara Falls to a trickle. [Wired]
- President Obama devised a moonshot plan to cure cancer . But can we truly “cure” it? [ Scientific American]
Did you miss "Himalayan Megaquake" this week? Watch it streaming online.