Scientists from CERN will announce on July 4 whether the tantalizing “hints” of the Higgs Boson which they presented in December have been strengthened or grown weaker over the past six months. Although the results may not be strong enough to declare an official discovery, they are rumored to show very similar signals to those…
University of Alberta researchers have uncovered physical proof that animals existed 585 million years ago, 30 million years earlier than all previous established records show. The researchers found fossilized tracks of a centimeter-long, slug-like animal left behind 585 million years ago in a silty sediment. The research team determined that the tracks were made by…
Pottery fragments found in a south China cave have been confirmed to be 20,000 years old, making them the oldest known pottery, archaeologists say. The findings add to recent efforts that have dated pottery piles in East Asia to more than 15,000 years ago, rebutting conventional theories that the invention of pottery correlates to the…
Data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have revealed Saturn’s moon Titan likely harbors a layer of liquid water under its ice shell. Researchers saw a large amount of squeezing and stretching as the moon orbited Saturn. They deduced that if Titan were composed entirely of stiff rock, the gravitational attraction of Saturn would cause bulges, or…
Rice University researchers have come up with a way to spray-paint a lithium-ion battery onto pretty much any smooth surface—even a beer stein. Published in Nature’s online journal, Scientific Reports, the invention means that batteries could be added to just about any object without significantly affecting its design. The Rice team, led by graduate student…
Over at Ars Technica, Matt Francis has the scoop on a nifty new quantum interference experiment using large molecules of phthalcyanine and its derivatives. The molecules are quite large — comprised of more than 100 atoms — which means this experiment is approaching that critical threshold where quantum effects (the subatomic realm) give way to…
Eighth-century jump in carbon-14 levels in trees could be explained by “red crucifix” supernova.
A rare and highly reactive iron mineral called green rust appears to have played an important role in ancient oceans, suggest new findings, which may have implications for the formation of Earth’s early atmosphere. The research team identified green rust in an Indonesian lake where conditions mimic those of the ancient oceans, and found the…
Green technology is proving lucrative in India, clean energy investments here were worth $10.3 billion, a growth of 52% on 2011, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. This means that India had the highest rate of growth in green technologies of any other major world economy, with wind and solar areas being where most money…
The Commission on Science and Technology, in collaboration with the UN Conference on Trade and Development, plans to publish a series of case studies highlighting best practice in gender equality policies in science, technology and innovation (STI) of governments around the world. The goal is to promote more effective STI policies, by taking a greater…