Adam Frank: Looking back 100, 1000 or 10,000 years, it became clear to me that time in cosmology (be it of the scientific or mytho-religious variety) has always been tightly braided with the human experience of time.
An incoming asteroid may benefit microbes living deep underground, according to a recent study of an ancient impact in the United States’ Chesapeake Bay. A biological census of the subsurface life forms suggests that impacts create new niches for these deep dwellers to spread into. In the last couple of decades, biologists have come to…
Lord Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth, says science and religion can mix, and he has set out to move the argument forward by considering the nexus of science and faith in a century he believes will be more religious than the last. ”Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion…
Murder is contagious and may spread like the flu, new research suggests. The researchers relied on the same techniques public-health officials use to track the spread of diseases, but applied them to the spread of homicide in Newark, N.J., over a 26-year span from 1982 to 2008. And just as in other epidemics, certain neighborhoods…
The world population will hit 7 billion on Halloween this year, according to a guesstimate from the United Nations. So, should you be scared? Author Metanexus Editors
As it turns out, Mars and Earth may be more similar than previously thought in one momentous way: Mars appears to have plate tectonics —giant pieces of the planet’s crust that move, break apart and smash into each other, forming such features as mountains, canyons and volcanoes — and experiences earthquakes, according to a new…
The first plants to appear on earth 470 million years ago triggered a series of ice ages by causing a reduction in atmospheric carbon, British researchers said. Scientists say the first plants to grow on land, the ancestors of mosses that grow today, had a dramatic impact on the global carbon cycle and the world’s…