In recent years astronomers have extended their view almost to the very edge of the observable universe. With the venerable Hubble Space Telescope researchers have spotted a handful of galaxies so faraway that we see them as they appeared just 400 million years or so after the big bang. But even as astronomers peer ever…
The relationship between science and religion has always been vexed. Most scientists I know are nonbelievers, convinced that there is no deity, or at least that there is no convincing evidence of one. Even those who are believers, like Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, see their religion and their science as…
“We already know it is too late to reverse the planet’s transformation, and we know what is going to happen next – superstorms, super-droughts, super-pandemics, massive population displacement, water scarcity, desertification and all the rest. Massive destruction, displacement and despair. Our worst fears are already upon us. The reality is far worse than anyone has…
The solid iron core is actually crystalline, surrounded by liquid. But the temperature at which that crystal can form had been a subject of long-running debate. Experiments outlined in Science used X-rays to probe tiny samples of iron at extraordinary pressures to examine how the iron crystals form and melt. Seismic waves captured after earthquakes…
A colleague at my institution recently invited a scientist with a “foreign-sounding” name to deliver a seminar. Foreign, yes, but not to my ears – immediately I knew that this was an Israeli. As fate would have it, not only did I recognise the name as Israeli, but I recognised the name – and remembered…
Researchers genetically modified E. coli bacteria to convert sugar into an oil that is almost identical to conventional diesel. If the process could be scaled up, this synthetic fuel could be a viable alternative to the fossil fuel, the team said. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Professor…
Most primates make rudimentary calls that consist of one or two syllables. But the gelada—native only to the grasslands of the Ethiopian plateau—displays “rapid fluctuations in pitch and volume” akin to human speech. The similarity has researchers’ tongues wagging. “Our finding provides support for the lip-smacking origins of [human] speech, because it shows that this…
Craig Hogan believes that the world is fuzzy. This is not a metaphor. Hogan, a physicist at the University of Chicago and director of the Fermilab Particle Astrophysics Center near Batavia, Ill., thinks that if we were to peer down at the tiniest subdivisions of space and time, we would find a universe filled with…
Human brains are remarkably inefficient in some key ways: our memories are lousy; our grasp of logic is shallow, and our capacity to do arithmetic is dismal. Our collective cognitive shortcomings are so numerous I’ve written a book about them. And yet, in some ways, we continue to far outstrip the very silicon-based computers that…
The search for a far-off twin of Earth has turned up two of the most intriguing candidates yet. Scientists say these new worlds are the right size and distance from their parent star, so that you might expect to find liquid water on their surface. It is impossible to know for sure. Being 1,200 light-years…