Tag: How sound waves can fight fires without water

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“How sound waves can fight fires without water. Are we seeing the first steps toward AI superintelligence?”

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Accessed on 09 December 2025, 2225 UTC.

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December 9—Hi everyone—I’m Eric Sullivan, the new senior desk editor for technology and engineering at Scientific American. Each week I’ll help guide you through the breakthroughs, the debates and the real-world systems behind the hype. In this edition: a quick tour of what’s changing fast, what’s quietly reshaping daily life, and what deserves a healthy dose of skepticism. What to know is below.

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Top Stories

Candle flame being blown out by sound waves

How Sound Waves Can Fight Fires without Water

A new sound-based system could squelch small fires before they grow into home-destroying blazes

Vanessa Bates Ramirez

A hand flipping through files of indexed cards.

AI Slop Is Spurring Record Requests for Imaginary Journals

The International Committee of the Red Cross warned that artificial intelligence models are making up research papers, journals and archives

Dan Vergano

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Digital human face composed of glowing particles connects to futuristic microchip emitting bright data streams

Are We Seeing the First Steps Toward AI Superintelligence?

Today’s leading AI models can already write and refine their own software. The question is whether that self-improvement can ever snowball into true superintelligence

Deni Ellis Béchard

Stickers sit on a table during in-person absentee voting on November 01, 2024 in Little Chute, Wisconsin. Election day is Tuesday November 5. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

AI Chatbots Are Shockingly Good at Political Persuasion

Chatbots can measurably sway voters’ choices, new research shows. The findings raise urgent questions about AI’s role in future elections

Deni Ellis Béchard

This shadow of a Royal New Zealand Air Force P3 Orion aircraft is seen on low cloud cover while it searches for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 over the Indian Ocean on March 31, 2014.

Autonomous Deep-Sea Robots to Lead New Search for Missing Flight MH370

Texas-based firm Ocean Infinity will send swarms of autonomous underwater vehicles into the southern Indian Ocean in a high-risk attempt to locate this missing jet

Eric Sullivan

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What We’re Reading

The power crunch threatening America’s AI ambitions | Financial Times
Trump Says U.S. Will Allow Nvidia H200 Chip Sales to China, Get 25% Cut | Wall Street Journal
This AI Model Can Intuit How the Physical World Works | WIRED
Border Patrol Agent Recorded Raid with Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses | 404 Media

From the Archive

When Fire Strikes, Stop, Drop and… Sing?

For over 150 years, scientists have known that fires can be extinguished with sound waves, but they still don’t know how

Alison Snyder