The Big Picture: The History of the Universe Is Our History
The Big Picture: The History of the Universe Is Our History
Similar Posts
Fundamental Particle ‘Splits’ into Quasiparticles
In a feat of technical mastery, condensed-matter physicists have managed to detect the elusive third constituent of an electron — its ‘orbiton’. The achievement could help to resolve a long-standing mystery about the origin of high-temperature superconductivity, and aid in the construction of quantum computers. Isolated electrons cannot be split into smaller components, earning them…
Accelerating Growth of Universe, Dark Energy Confirmed
The pesky reality that the universe’s expansion is accelerating — an observation that prompted astronomers to invoke an unknown entity called dark energy to explain it — has been further confirmed by new measurements. Scientists have used cosmic magnifying glasses called gravitational lenses to observe super-bright distant galaxies, giving a measure of how quickly the…
Evolving Towards Murder: The Hare, the Tortoise, and the Aurora Madman
From David Barash’s post, The Hare, the Tortoise, and the Aurora Madman, in reaction to the tragedy in Colorado, from The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Brainstorm blog: Far more than any other critter, we Homo saps are stuck between two worlds, biological evolution and cultural evolution. The former is a Darwinian, genetic process, necessarily slow…
Should Robots Be Blamed for Battlefield Mistakes?
As militaries develop autonomous robotic warriors to replace humans on the battlefield, new ethical questions emerge. If a robot in combat has a hardware malfunction or programming glitch that causes it to kill civilians, do we blame the robot, or the humans who created and deployed it? Some argue that robots do not have free…
Apollo Rocks Analysis: Solar Wind Made Moon Water
Analyzing grains of soil collected from three Apollo lunar missions, geochemists have figured out that the hydrogen in trace amounts of water on the moon’s surface probably came from solar wind, the outflow of positively-charged hydrogen from the sun. For decades, scientists didn’t find much hydrogen in the lunar samples that had been returned to…
Climate Crimes Against Humanity?
PBS recently aired Frontline’s “Climate of Doubt,” documenting the success of the denialists in reversing U.S. political opinion on climate science. While journalists and academics have been covering this story, this was the first comprehensive television documentary about the groups and political forces driving the climate change denial effort. Scientists’ physical predictions are often accompanied…