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Ancient blades made of volcanic rock that were discovered at what may be the world’s oldest temple suggest that the site in Turkey was the hub of a pilgrimage that attracted a cosmopolitan group of people some 11,000 years ago. Researchers matched up about 130 of the blades, which would have been used as tools,…
Richard Pell, who teaches electronic media at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has a new museum, the Center for PostNatural History. With it, Pell endeavors to create a curiosity cabinet from the Anthropocene period – the age of man. The only criteria for inclusion in Pell’s Wunderkammer are that the organisms have been intentionally altered…
Astronomers using U.S. and European telescopes say they’ve obtained a first tantalizing look at a crucial early stage in star formation. The new observations using radio and infrared telescopes will help scientists understand the early stages of a sequence of events through which a giant cloud of gas and dust collapses into dense cores that,…
The enduring appeal of God and the New Physics is that is addresses the Big Question – not how, when or what, but why?
A giant squid’s soccer ball-sized eyeballs are three times wider than any other animal’s, but explaining why has kept squid researchers busy. New dissections and computer models offer a lead in the mystery: The enormous peepers evolved to see bioluminescent trails of light left by sperm whales, the squids’ great predator. Of the handful of…
Given the same raw materials, Mars would have been a better host for life to arise than Earth, which some scientists believe was too flooded for the chemistry of life to gain a toehold. Without at least occasional dry land, the chemistry needed to get life started doesn’t work very well because the molecules to…
In celebration of 1,000 days in orbit, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team released two beautiful videos of our moon, one a fiery drama showing the moon’s tough evolution and another touring its most interesting sites. The historical montage takes you from the moon’s earliest days, through the massive south pole splat that formed the South…
Our earliest invertebrate ancestors did not have brains. Yet, over hundreds of millions of years, we and other vertebrates have developed amazingly complicated mental machinery. “It must have evolutionary roots somewhere, but where?” wrote Henry Gee, an editor at Nature, in an essay published in the journal’s March 15 issue. Years of study of common…
Humankind is constantly inventing new ways to stay in touch. But in some situations it’s difficult to keep the lines of communication open. A space shuttle’s radio falls silent when the craft slips behind a neighboring planet. A submarine loses contact when deep water blocks signals from the surface. Scientists recently proved possible a new…
What are the options when a scientist faces a problem with no obvious solution? That is the dilemma astronomers have faced over the last few decades as they took a census of cosmic matter and motion. Mapping the beautiful pinwheel arcs of spiral galaxies, they found the constituent stars moving far too fast to be…