Do you believe in God? Or do you put your faith in science? Some argue that it has to be one or the other–that either you accept scientific dogma or give yourself over to dogma of the religious sort. Others see no contradiction between reason and faith, and are just as comfortable with the Big…
Late last year, scientists with the OPERA collaboration in Gran Sasso, Italy reported an incredible finding: neutrinos that appeared to be moving faster than the speed of light. In February, the OPERA researchers found a couple small problems with their experimental set-up, calling into question the original faster-than-light neutrino result. The event highlighted the difficulty…
Participants in a recent study who were instructed to try to visualize angels during states of lucid dreaming had, in some cases, succeeded in having experiences which seemed to parallel the encounters of Elijah and other Hebrew prophets with angelic messengers, as recorded in the Bible. The intensity of experience in lucid dreams is one…
Google is stepping up wind-power purchases to reduce emissions, even as it devotes most of its renewable energy investments to sun-related projects, a trade-off aimed at reining in costs as the company seeks higher returns. Google drew 30 percent of the energy it consumed last year from renewable sources, virtually all of it from wind,…
Our cultural tendency is to avoid serious conversations about end of life, and mortality has become politically polarized, but the longer we wait, the harder it will be to avoid disaster.
In Silicon Valley, the line between computing and biology has begun to blur in a way that could have enormous consequences for human longevity. The promise is that low-cost gene sequencing will lead to a new era of personalized medicine, yielding new approaches for treating cancers and other serious diseases. The arrival of such cures…
In a recent book — Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism — the philosopher Alvin Plantinga argues that the conflict between science and religion is superficial. Natural science doesn’t entail the nonexistence of “a person such as God” or even rule out the possibility of miracles. Given quantum indeterminacy, at least according…
The antimatter version of the hydrogen atom could soon finally give up its secrets. Scientists expect that antihydrogen will have exactly the same properties as hydrogen; but after 80 years, the test is only just becoming possible. Every particle has an antiparticle, which is identical in every respect except that it has opposite charge. The…
Researchers have deciphered the genetic code of the gorilla – the last of the Great Ape genuses to be sequenced and, after chimps, gorillas are the closest living relative of humans. Understanding these genetic catalogues, from our closest living relatives, can reveal much about our evolutionary path — such as when we diverged from our…
More scientists are getting closer in the search for the “God particle” of physics that would help explain the fundamentals of the universe, but they haven’t found it yet. In the hunt for the Higgs boson, which is key to understanding why matter has mass, two teams of physicists using results from a now-closed American…