The European Space Agency’s next big mission may be particularly juicy for scientists hunting for signs of extraterrestrial life. The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or JUICE, spacecraft has been formally approved and is now slated to blast off for the gas giant planet in 2022, ESA officials announced. The space probe will tour three of…
Casino bosses, take note: Physicists have described a way to guarantee complete randomness in a flow of information, such as the numbers generated by a roulette wheel. The work could allow a person to transform a stream of not-quite-random information into a totally random one. The scientists describe the finding online in Nature Physics. True…
In Tennessee a new law took effect last month that allows teachers to discuss creationism as an alternative to evolution. The Volunteer State has now given us both the Monkey Trial and the Monkey Bill. But it’s not just one state. Polls show that fewer than half of Americans accept evolution. Most of us still…
The atmosphere of Mars is less than 1% the density of Earth’s. It’s one of the reasons liquid water covers much of our planet but cannot exist on the Red Planet. As more research points toward the possibility of water on early Mars, scientists have increased their studies on the density of its atmosphere billions…
Efforts to promote sustainable development must tap into technologies developed locally, driven by community needs and priorities. The products of modern science and technology (S&T), from chemical pesticides to carbon-emitting combustion engines, are frequently blamed — with some justification — for the unsustainable use of the planet’s resources. At the same time S&T offers a…
Two groups of researchers, led by Evan Eichler and Franck Polleux, have found that humans, alone among all animals, have three extra copies of a gene called SRGAP2, which is involved in brain development. The second of these copies, SRGAP2C, is particularly interesting because it affects the development of neurons, and produces features that are…
In the clammy depths of a southern Illinois coal mine lies the largest fossil forest ever discovered, at least 50 times as extensive as the previous contender. Scientists are exploring dripping passages by the light of headlamps, mapping out an ecosystem from 307 million years ago, just before the world’s first great forests were wiped…
The past five years have seen a proliferation of social networking sites designed specifically for scholars, like Academia.edu, which, with 1.2 million registered users, is one of the heavyweights in the field. The free sites, which also include Mendeley.com, ResearchGate.net, Zotero.org, and a number of discipline-specific platforms, typically offer users a way to organize their…
Every second, lightning flashes some 50 times on Earth. Together these discharges coalesce and get stronger, creating electromagnetic waves circling around Earth, to create a beating pulse between the ground and the lower ionosphere, about 60 miles up in the atmosphere. This electromagnetic signature, known as Schumann Resonance, had only been observed from Earth’s surface…
The males of many species impress potential mates with brilliant plumage, massive antlers, or expensive cars. Water striders, however, don’t go in for courtship. For these smoothly gliding pond insects, mating is a wrestling match in which the male grips the female’s head and pins her down while she struggles to throw him off. Now…