To learn more about life’s origins, scientists investigated some of the oldest remnants of crust on Earth—rocks 3.7 billion to 3.8 billion years old from Isua on the southwestern coast of Greenland.
Medical research in the U.K. is being jeopardized by activists who have persuaded transport companies to stop importing mice, rats and rabbits for scientific experiments, a former British science minister says. The boycott affects only a tiny proportion of laboratory animals, but scientists say these particular animals are the most important ones for their research….
A bold plan to bring every person on Earth sustainable energy within 18 years will face its first test of international acceptance at the Rio+20 Earth Summit – the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in June. The Sustainable Energy For All initiative is a flagship programme launched by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon. Its goals…
This fall, science writers have made sport of yet another instance of bad neuroscience. The culprit this time is Naomi Wolf; her new book, “Vagina,” has been roundly drubbed for misrepresenting the brain and neurochemicals like dopamine and oxytocin. Earlier in the year, Chris Mooney raised similar ire with the book “The Republican Brain,” which…
A two-billion-dollar robot scoops up pale-red samples on the surface of Mars to search for chemical clues in the powdery grains of the alien soil. At the same time, British scientists brave a notoriously windswept plain in Antarctica to investigate an ancient lake lying hidden beneath the ice-sheet. The two missions are exploring different planets…
Putting Time In Perspective is a series of timelines posted on WaitButWhy.com. Informative and fun, start with your morning coffee today and change up the scales of your reality with these annotated timelines.
How many scientists does it take to author a study on the Higgs boson particle? Around 6,000. Two articles by the teams at CERN, about 30 pages each, include 19 pages of single-spaced text with roughly 6,000 names of researchers who peer-reviewed the results of the experiments, making the discovery of the elusive God particle…