around_the_web
An 8.7 earthquake that struck west of Indonesia on April 11 was the biggest of its kind ever recorded and confirms suspicions that a giant tectonic plate is breaking up, scientists believe. The quake, caused by an unprecedented quadruple-fault rupture, gave Earth’s crustal mosaic such a shock that it unleashed quakes around the world nearly…
From Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie’s blog at Huffington Post: The Yom Kippur liturgy does not allow one to focus on the fun of religion and to push aside the reality of evil and sin. The words are utterly uncompromising. They do not speak of sin broadly and abstractly, but concretely and specifically, thus forcing a…
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has just published a study criticizing Fox News Channel and the Wall Street Journal’s opinion section for misleading coverage of the climate change issue. Jumping straight to the key findings: Over a recent six-month period, 93% of Fox News Channel’s representations of climate science were misleading (37 out of…
The idea for an eternal clock that would continue to keep time even after the universe ceased to exist has intrigued physicists. However, no one has figured out how one might be built, until now. Researchers have now proposed an experimental design for a “space-time crystal” that would be able to keep time forever. This…
What do we do about death? How do we live with the fact of our mortality? Many (obviously) look to religion for answers, but some have a hard time accepting the life-after-death claims of their own religion. The dilemma is not uncommon: Although 80-90% of Americans believe in God, some 25-50% do not believe in…
Nearly 1.5 million computing jobs will become available over the next five years. The problem is, even in this economy, there will only be enough qualified graduates to fill about 30% of those positions. The reason for the disconnect is clear: While the tech industry is changing at a break-neck pace and creating new jobs…
Top NASA officials have picked a leading candidate for the agency’s next major mission: construction of a new outpost that would send astronauts farther from Earth than at any time in history. The so-called “gateway spacecraft” would hover in orbit on the far side of the moon, support a small astronaut crew and function as…
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…
Last summer the last Space Shuttle took its last space flight, but last week it took its last worldly one. It ended a generation’s era of space marvel, which turned out to take a very different path from that of the previous generation. During the 1950s and 1960s, space exploration was primarily a proxy for…
If you have an iPad, you can take a closer look at one of history’s greatest minds. The National Museum of Health & Medicine, Chicago released an app that displays slides of Albert Einstein’s brain. The app is for sale to researchers and curious iPad users alike, and all profits are going to the Chicago…