It was a slender bird, with long wings and a spear-like bill to catch swift ocean prey. And scientists say the first glimpse of the extinct giant penguin species was worth the 26 million-year wait. Experts from New Zealand and the United States reconstructed a fossil skeleton of one of the giant sea birds to…
Astronomers have managed to detect the telltale fingerprints of organic life on Earth using a new technique that examines sunlight reflected onto the moon by our planet. The so-called “earthshine” observations may pave the way for a similar tool to help spot signs of alien life in the universe, scientists say. While the existence of…
A team of religion scholars ignited a firestorm of controversy with the release of a documentary film and book claiming to shed light on the burial practices of 1st-century Christians living near Jerusalem. Although there’s a good deal of debate over what the researchers have actually discovered, it’s interesting to note that this debate has…
The world’s first asteroid sample return mission is providing some stunning insights to the evolution of the primordial pieces of rock floating around in our solar system. But far from asteroids being quiet, peaceful objects drifting through space, analysis of the tiny dust samples from the surface of near-Earth asteroid Itokawa has shown they are…
When meeting strangers in the wild, dolphins whistle signature tunes that may be the animal equivalent of “Hello, my name is…” stickers. These signature whistles have been observed in captive dolphins for decades, but new research is the first to reveal how these sea mammals use the sounds when one pod meets another in the…
Even as he and Mitt Romney battle for the Republican presidential nomination, Rick Santorum is making just as many headlines for calling President Obama a “snob” recently. The basis for the insult was, perhaps, more surprising than the insult itself; the president, he claims, “wants everybody in america to go to college.” But if we…
The 5,300-year-old Iceman had brown eyes, Lyme disease and modern-day Mediterranean relatives
BM has announced a breakthrough that could lead to quantum computers within 15 years. Researchers presented results of successful experiments at the American Physical Society in Boston that could go a long way to solving some of the critical problems for quantum computing to become a reality, including increasing the lifetime of quantum informational bits….
For fans of the British upstairs-downstairs TV series Downton Abbey, skullduggery may seem evenly distributed among the social ranks. But in real life, it’s the upper classes that are more likely to behave dishonorably, according to new research. Observers of human nature have long puzzled over the possibility of an ethical class divide. On the…
Department Of Energy chief Steven Chu says research will reshape the future of energy, enabling electricity grids that run on renewable energy and batteries and vehicles that are both more efficient and powerful.