Advocates of free will can rest easy, for now. A 30-year-old classic experiment that is often used to argue against free will might have been misinterpreted.
Some scientists advocate pumping aerosols into the atmosphere to counter global warming by reflecting solar energy away. But according to Carnegie Institution scientists, the price we’d have to pay is the loss of the Earth’s blue skies. Blocking 2% of the sun’s light, they say, would make the sky three to five times brighter, and…
Researchers have come up with a way to glimpse the infant Universe by decoding the earliest ripples in its light. They say this can be achieved by capturing the specific radio wavelength of 21cm from the heavens. The trick is to tell the difference between 21cm waves from our galaxy and those from distant, ancient…
One of Europe’s main contributions to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is built and ready to ship to the US. The Mid-Infrared Instrument (Miri) will gather key data as the $9 billion observatory seeks to identify the first starlight in the Universe. James Webb – regarded as the successor to Hubble – is due…
From April 2013, science papers must be made free to access within six months of publication if they come from work paid for by one of the UK’s seven government-funded grant agencies, the research councils, which together spend about £2.8 billion each year on research. The policy, announced by the agencies’ umbrella body Research Councils…
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has produced one of its most extraordinary views of the Universe to date. Called the eXtreme Deep Field, the picture captures a mass of galaxies stretching back almost to the time when the first stars began to shine. But this was no simple point and snap – some of the…
It’s certainly true that teaching comes naturally to us humans. There’s no culture on Earth without teachers. But just because something’s easy doesn’t mean it’s not special. And in the animal kingdom, teaching is exceedingly rare. In fact, it’s not clear whether any other animal can teach. Author Metanexus Editors