Cosmic Society
From the 2009 Terry Lectures at Yale University by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel Primack.
From the 2009 Terry Lectures at Yale University by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel Primack.
Unthinkable as it may be, humanity, every last person, could someday be wiped from the face of the Earth. We have learned to worry about asteroids and supervolcanoes, but the more-likely scenario, according to Nick Bostrom, a professor of philosophy at Oxford, is that we humans will destroy ourselves. Bostrom, who directs Oxford’s Future of…
With media figureheads like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore representing the right and left, it’s no wonder conservatives and liberals seem worlds apart. But the two sides of the political spectrum are closer together than they believe, a new study reveals. Everyone, including political moderates, overestimates the gap between liberal and conservative morals, according to…
Despite the ability to walk upright, early relatives of humanity represented by the famed “Lucy” fossil likely spent much of their time in trees, remaining very active climbers, researchers say. Humans are unique among living primates in that walking bipedally — on two feet — is humans’ chief mode of locomotion. This upright posture freed…
International talks to address human-caused global warming began 20 years ago in Rio de Janeiro. But despite attempts to curb emissions of the greenhouse gases responsible, they have continued to pour into the atmosphere since then. Last year was no exception. In 2011, the burning of fossil fuels, as well as other activities such as…
Do you want to live to 120, only to feel like you’re 120? In the human quest for longevity — if not immortality — it’s a question that often gets overlooked. But it’s a core issue for a team of scientists at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, whose work is reshaping the course of geriatric…
The Environmental Protection Agency for the first time is making available detailed information on sources of greenhouse gas emissions, from the Mount Sinai Hospital heating plant in Manhattan to the nation’s largest coal-burning power plant in Georgia. The agency unveiled a searchable computerized map that allows users to identify the nation’s major stationary sources of…