Economist: Will more-efficient lighting actually increase energy useâmdash;rather than save energy? That idea has been proposed by Jeff Tsao of Sandia National Laboratories and his colleagues in a study published in the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics. The team has found that improvements in the supply of light stimulate the desire for more lightâmdash;just as building more roads stimulates traffic growth. With better and cheaper lighting, the researchers note, interior lighting at home and work, which is currently only one-tenth the brightness of outdoors, could be made brighter, and the outdoors at night could be made as light as day.
The finding that the Saturnian moon may host layers of icy slush instead of a global ocean could change how planetary scientists think about other icy moons as well.
Modeling the shapes of tree branches, neurons, and blood vessels is a thorny problem, but researchers have just discovered that much of the math has already been done.
January 29, 2026 12:52 PM
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