Greening for God: Evangelicals Learn to Love Earth Day
While some of their leaders denounce environmentalism as pagan worship, others are adopting a distinctly Christian approach to “creation care.”
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A New Kind of Quantum Junction
A new type of quantum bit called a “phase-slip qubit,” devised by researchers at the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute and their collaborators, has enabled the world’s first-ever experimental demonstration of coherent quantum phase slip (CQPS). The groundbreaking result sheds light on an elusive phenomenon whose existence — a natural outcome of the hundred-year-old theory of…
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Women Seek Less-Dominant Dates in Recession
When thinking about the economic recession, women exhibit less interest in alpha males in favor of guys who call themselves “natural followers,” a new study suggests. The results are surprising because they fly in the face of what evolutionary psychologists expect from women’s mate choices. According to evolutionary theory, women will seek men who provide…
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Life On Earth Evolved From ‘Redundant’ Chemical Systems
The earliest cells were unstable chemical systems that survived by combining a handful of shaky carbon-based assemblies together, researchers say. All life on Earth is based on carbon. To create living matter from carbon, organisms carry out chemical reactions such as photosynthesis to generate organic compounds from the carbon dioxide in the environment. These mechanisms,…
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Evolution Seen in Synthetic DNA
Researchers have succeeded in mimicking the chemistry of life in synthetic versions of DNA and RNA molecules. The work shows that DNA and its chemical cousin RNA are not unique in their ability to encode information and to pass it on through heredity. The work, reported in Science, is promising for future “synthetic biology” and…
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How Big Data Is Changing Astronomy
Think of all the data humans have collected over the long history of astronomy, from the cuneiform tablets of ancient Babylon to images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. If we could express all of that data as a number of bits, our fundamental unit of information, that number would be, well, astronomical. But that’s…
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We Have No Idea How Bad Solar Storms Might Get
When the sun really acts up, spewing out heaps of charged particles in a burst called a coronal mass ejection, space weather can get menacing—and future storms could be even worse than the ones we’ve experienced. Solar storms can damage power grids, fry communications satellites and disrupt aircraft electronics. A few oft-cited historical examples: a…
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Heavy Elements Key for Planet Formation
Planets form more commonly in star systems with relatively high concentrations of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, a new study suggests. Such heavier elements are necessary to form the dust grains and planetesimals that build planetary cores, according to the study, which was carried out by researchers Jarrett Johnson and Hui Li of Los…
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Scientists Work To Combat Aging
Do you want to live to 120, only to feel like you’re 120? In the human quest for longevity — if not immortality — it’s a question that often gets overlooked. But it’s a core issue for a team of scientists at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, whose work is reshaping the course of geriatric…
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Polar Bears Older Than Thought
Polar bears have been chilling on the ice far longer than is generally thought, new research suggests, and they probably interbred with brown bears at one point after the two species separated. The new German study contradicts data from a study published last July in the journal Current Biology that suggested polar bears separated from…