A newly discovered galactic structure is so large that it means one of our basic assumptions about the nature of the universe could be wrong.
Most people barely notice lichens, but Dr. Anne Pringle, a mycologist at Harvard, believes they may help answer one of science’s greatest questions: Is immortality biologically possible? For eight years, Dr. Pringle has been measuring, sketching and scrutinizing lichens, which belong to the genus Xanthoparmelia. She wants to know whether they deteriorate with the passage…
NASA’s Swift satellite recently detected a rising tide of high-energy X-rays from a source toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The outburst, produced by a rare X-ray nova, announced the presence of a previously unknown stellar-mass black hole. “Bright X-ray novae are so rare that they’re essentially once-a-mission events and this is the…
As a ball rolled down an incline, young Sylvester James Gates, along with the other students in his class, were tasked with timing it and observing the principles of mechanics in action. “I saw a piece of magic happen right before my very eyes,” he says. “Because, while I was well aware that mathematics was…
A review of John A. Jungerman’s “World in Process: Creativity and Interconnection in the New Physics.”
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) tore into scientists as tools of the devil in a speech at the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet in September. “All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” said Broun, a physician, with an…
A cost analysis of the technologies needed to transport materials into the stratosphere to reduce the amount of sunlight hitting Earth and therefore reduce the effects of global climate change has shown that they are both feasible and affordable. Published in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters, the study has shown that the basic technology…