Atoms and the Miracle of Life
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Quantum Biology
ByadminThe panel on “Quantum Biology and the Hidden Nature of Nature” at the World Science Festival last month was particularly memorable. Skip to 5:30 to hear John Hockenberry give an informative and humorous introduction to these strange bedfellows—biology and quantum mechanics. Paul Davies, Seth Lloyd, and Thorsten Ritz then join Hockenberry for a fascinating conversation….
Viruses Evolve in Real Time
Charles Darwin recognized that natural selection can make eyes sharper, muscles stronger, and fur thicker. But evolution does more than just improve what’s already there. It also gives rise to entirely new things—like eyes and muscles and fur. To study how new things evolve, biologists usually have to rely on ancient clues left behind for…
Erratic Environment May Be Key to Human Evolution
At Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania, where excavations helped to confirm Africa was the cradle of humanity, scientists now find the landscape once fluctuated rapidly, likely guiding early human evolution.These findings suggest that key mental developments within the human lineage may have been linked with a highly variable environment. Scientists had long thought Africa went…
Why Do We Keep Going Back to Mars?
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 Next Ice Age and the Anthropocene
If you’ve wondered where to look for signs that Earth is entering a geological epoch of our own making, the Anthropocene, a good place to start is the growing body of research concluding that what was once seen as an inevitable descent into the next ice age has been put off for a very long…
The View From the Center of the Universe
Today’s golden age of astronomy is revealing that our universe is rich, fascinating, and meaningful, and in it we humans occupy an extraordinary place.