The Higgs boson, the pope, and the curious interaction between organized religion and big science.
How’s it all going to end? Being a cosmologist, I’m not talking about our new year, but about our universe, billions of years from now. This question has gotten me worrying about what I call the Big Snap. The usual suspects for our upcoming “cosmochalypse” are the Big Chill, the Big Crunch, and the Big…
China, India, South Africa and Brazil said a climate deal planned for 2020 won’t be a “new regime,” threatening confrontation with the U.S. which wants to eliminate a firewall between developed and developing nations. The four nations reined in expectations for the Durban Platform, a mandate agreed last December at United Nations treaty talks in…
A special panel of scientists issued a report detailing the dozens of ways how climate change is already disrupting the health, homes and other facets of daily American life. It warns that those disruptions will increase in the future. The report uses the word “threat” or variations of it 198 times and versions of the…
The Defense Department recently announced new policies that ease restrictions on jobs women can do in the military, opening up more than 14,000 positions to women and allowing them closer than ever to the front lines. But embedded in that news was a long list of positions that are still closed to women, including infantry…
The misconduct of the financial industry no longer surprises most Americans. Only about one in five has much trust in banks, according to Gallup polls, about half the level in 2007. And it’s not just banks that are frowned upon. Trust in big business overall is declining as well – 62% of Americans believe corruption…
To those who enjoy the pleasures of the dining table, the news may come as a relief: drastically cutting back on calories does not seem to lengthen lifespan in primates. The verdict, from a 25-year study in rhesus monkeys fed 30% less than control animals, represents another setback for the notion that a simple, diet-triggered…