The discovery of life beyond Earth would shake up our view of humanity’s place in the universe, but it probably wouldn’t seriously threaten organized religion, experts say. The Bible, Koran and other sacred texts of the world’s major religions stress God’s special concern for humanity and for Earth. So the discovery of aliens — microbes…
It’s not just artistic types that find math a turn-off and try to avoid having to deal with it – scientists do the same. A new study by University of Bristol biologists shows that if a piece of research is packed full of mathematical equations, other scientists tend to ignore it. Scientific articles laden with…
A simple brain trace can identify autism in children as young as two years old, scientists believe. A U.S. team at Boston Children’s Hospital say EEG traces, which record electrical brain activity using scalp electrodes, could offer a diagnostic test for this complex condition. EEG clearly distinguished children with autism from other peers in a…
The Wow! signal, a mysterious radio transmission detected in 1977 that may or may not have come from extraterrestrials, is finally getting a response from humanity. Anyone can contribute his or her two cents — or 140 characters, to be exact — to the cosmic reply via Twitter. All tweets composed between 8 p.m. EDT…
It’s not just man’s closer primate relatives that exhibit brain power. Dolphins, dogs and elephants are teaching us a few lessons, too. Dolphin brains involve completely different wiring from primates, especially in the neocortex, which is central to higher functions such as reasoning and conscious thought. Dolphins are so distantly related to humans that it’s…
Researchers should scour historic medical archives to discover knowledge that could inform today’s biomedical research and clinical practice.
As the world waits for the next installment of news in the hunt for the Higgs boson, a simple smart phone game encourages players to hide, not hunt, the world’s favorite particle. Agent Higgs has a simple interface. Players shuffle these particles around a grid, trying to land on – and therefore conceal – the…
Andrew Revkin reflects on the end of the “Rio+20” United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in his Dot Earth blog from the New York Times. Ilan Safit, a colleague of mine at Pace University who teaches philosophy and religious studies with a focus on the environment, sees the focus of Rio and related discussions as…
Farmers, used to betting on the weather, are changing their tactics to cope with changes in the rules of the game
Our universe could have popped into existence 13.7 billion years ago without any divine help whatsoever, researchers say. That may run counter to our instincts, which recoil at the thought of something coming from nothing, but scientists say, we should trust the laws of physics. In the very weird world of quantum mechanics, which describes…