The empty set may seem a bit feeble, but appearances deceive; it provides a vital building block for the whole of mathematics.
The huge NASA rover speeding toward an August landing on Mars may be the most capable and complex Red Planet explorer ever launched, but it’s far from the first. The 1-ton Curiosity rover — which will search for evidence that Mars is, or ever was, capable of supporting microbial life — represents humanity’s 40th effort…
The rate of star formation in the universe has dropped to just 3% of its long-ago peak, and there’s no end in sight to the decline, a new study finds. A team of astronomers has determined that the rate of star birth peaked around 11 billion years ago, just 2.7 billion years after the Big…
As all the people and computers on our planet get more and more closely connected, it’s becoming increasingly useful to think of all the people and computers on the planet as a kind of global brain. It’s important to realize that intelligence is not just something that happens inside individual brains. It also arises with…
Exotic kingdoms and bizarre creatures deep beneath the sea or within the bowels of the Earth have been the stuff of myths, science fiction and steampunk fantasy since before Jules Verne first set pen to paper. However, a real-life realm of strange beings lurks within undersea volcanoes and understanding that ecosystem on Earth helps in…
Better lithium ion batteries have led to an explosion in availability of plug-in passenger cars. And now, thanks to relatively cheap electricity and the simplicity of the electric drivetrain, electric vehicles have even more potential for use in the extremely cost-sensitive public transportation arena—a concept that is only just taking root. In particular, two projects…
The Chandra X-Ray Observatory announced that’s it has observed something unprcedented: a supermassive black hole being ejected from its own galaxy at speeds of millions of miles per hour. The evidence suggests that the ejection was caused, 4 billion years ago, when the black hole collided with the supermassive black hole of another galaxy, producing…