Scientists are using funhouse images of faraway galaxies to learn how dark matter shaped the cosmos we see today.
Our first foray into laser-equipped combat aircraft was the Airborne Laser Testbed, a Boeing 747 with a gigantic chemically-pumped megawatt laser turret in its nose. It was pretty awesome from a conceptual standpoint, but it didn’t work very well, and was scrapped last year. This doesn’t mean that the idea of high-powered lasers on aircraft…
Like songbirds and humans, male mice have brain circuits and behaviors they may use to learn some of their sounds.
In three stars far, far away, one of the rarest elements known to man has been spotted, improving our understanding about how heavy elements are created, bolstering evidence that a rare type of supernova may have been responsible for their creation. Tellurium — a brittle and toxic semiconducting metal — has for the first time…
Americans’ confidence in organized religion is at its lowest in more than three decades, with just 44% having a lot of faith in the church, a new Gallup poll suggests. The results follow a long-term decline in Americans’ confidence in religion since the 1970s, when Americans ranked “the church or organized religion” higher than any…
Averting the worst consequences of human-induced climate change is a “great moral issue” on a par with slavery, according to the leading NASA climate scientist Jim Hansen. Hansen, will be awarded the prestigious Edinburgh Medal for his contribution to science, and in his acceptance speech will call for a worldwide tax on all carbon emissions….
Summer storms may create new holes in our protective ozone layer as Earth heats up—bringing increased solar ultraviolet radiation to densely populated areas, a new study says. What’s more, if more sunlight reaches Earth, skin cancer could become the new marquee risk of global warming. As the planet warms, some studies have suggested summer storms…