The Big Picture: The History of the Universe Is Our History
The Big Picture: The History of the Universe Is Our History
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Social Rank Linked to Immunity
A study of rhesus macaque monkeys may have solved a long-standing puzzle on a link between social rank and health. A study of 10 social groups of macaque females showed that the activity level of an individual’s immune genes was an accurate predictor of her social rank. In a paper in Proceedings of the National…
Countdown to the Man-Made Apocalypse
Created in 1947, the doomsday clock graphically reflects how close humanity might be to human-induced apocalypse, in terms of the “number of minutes to midnight”—at which time, presumably, time itself will no longer matter. Currently, the clock is set at five minutes to midnight. Nuclear weapons continue to be the most urgent global threat to…
What Happened Before the Big Bang?
As we go back in time, we find that heat intensifies to such a level that all bonds that keep matter together break: no more molecules, atoms, atomic nuclei; even protons and neutrons get broken down to their constituent quarks. If we keep going back, we quickly reach a time when energies were beyond what…
Patch of Seagrass is World’s Oldest Living Organism
A swathe of seagrass in the Mediterranean could be the oldest known living thing on Earth. Carlos Duarte of the University of Western Australia in Perth sequenced the DNA of Posidonia oceanica at 40 sites spanning 3500 kilometres of seafloor, from Spain to Cyprus. One patch off the island of Formentera was identical over 15…
Consciousness Is a Matter of Constraint
Brain researchers and philosophers of mind have focused on brain processes, neural computations, and their correspondences with the physical world. But what if we should be focusing on what is not there instead? Author Metanexus Editors
NASA Seeks Wisdom of Crowd for Mars Robot Missions
Scientists and engineers worldwide can submit papers for a conference dedicated to brainstorming ideas for future Mars exploration.