Continents Move, Life Evolves
13.7 billion years of evolution in 85 seconds.
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New Jupiter Mission to Target Alien Oceans
The European Space Agency’s next big mission may be particularly juicy for scientists hunting for signs of extraterrestrial life. The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or JUICE, spacecraft has been formally approved and is now slated to blast off for the gas giant planet in 2022, ESA officials announced. The space probe will tour three of…
Simplifying Genetic Codes to Look Back in Time
Tokyo Institute of Technology researchers have shown simpler versions of the universal genetic code can still function in protein synthesis. In addition to understanding early primordial organisms, the research could lead to applications preventing non-natural genetically modified materials from entering the natural world. Author Metanexus Editors
Envisioning a Civilization Recovery Plan
ByEditorWhat knowledge contained in what books of science, culture, and civilization would you most want to pass on to the surviving humans of a major planetary catastrophe? You get to choose one book, not the whole Library of Congress.
Celebrating Impractical Physicists
Do you think cutting-edge scientists should earn as much as star athletes, celebrity artists or Wall Street bankers? The Russian billionaire investor Yuri Milner does, and this week he put his money where his heart is, depositing $3 million in the bank accounts of each of the nine theoretical physicists he judged to be doing…
Sun’s Plasma Loops Rcreated in Lab to Help Understand Solar Physics
In orbit around Earth is a wide range of satellites that we rely on for everything from television and radio feeds to GPS navigation. Although these spacecraft soar high above storms on Earth, they are still vulnerable to weather—only it’s weather from the sun. Large solar flares—or plasma that erupts from the sun’s surface—can cause…
The Salvation of Extraterrestrials
Some years ago a group of scientists produced an exercise in probability: the Drake equation. It looks at the percentage of galaxies with the right kinds of stars, the percentage of stars forming planets, the percentage of planets hospitable to life, to intelligence, and to intelligence adequate to communicate out into space. Some scientists then…