Despite great medical advances that have lengthened human life spans, your chances of living a very long life may be lower than you’d hoped. That’s the conclusion of a study by two longevity experts who reviewed the standard models that predict mortality rates and turned up a major error. Instead of confirming that death rates…
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson relates his personal story of how he became a scientist and his peak spiritual experiences in doing science—including his comprehension that “we are made of stardust!”
In Washington, religious groups are interest groups. Just like the National Rifle Association or the farm lobby, the bishops want their priorities to take precedence over everyone else’s — and their clerical garb gives their position gravitas. But in truth, the bishops’ claims to moral truth are just that — claims. Their religious vows do…
Astronomers have found black holes and supermassive black holes. But the discovery of a mid-size black hole could support the idea that supermassive black holes grow by eating others.
Mercury does not cause autism, another study now concludes. The levels of mercury in the urine of children with autism were no higher than urine mercury levels of children without the condition, the study from England found. The discredited idea that the form of mercury, called ethylmercury, sometimes used in vaccines may lead to autism…
Limited access to clean sources of energy, known as energy poverty, makes nearly half the world’s population reliant on burning wood, animal waste, coal or charcoal to cook. This leads to severe respiratory diseases that kill roughly two million people worldwide each year. It is often women and children who suffer the most from indoor…
Pygmy goats can develop “accents” as they grow older, according to scientists. The young animals, known as “kids”, are raised in groups or “creches” with goats of a similar age. Researchers found that when young goats mixed in these social groups their calls became more similar. The animals join an elite group of mammals known…
One of the most mind-blowing areas of quantum mechanics is entanglement: two or more particles separated in space can have physical properties that are correlated. A measurement performed on one particle will tell us the result of the same measurement taken on an entangled particle. Entanglement is important but difficult to study, both in terms…
The rogue proteins behind variant CJD, the human form of mad cow disease, have revealed their benign side. Prions, it seems, lie at the heart of a newly discovered form of near-instant evolution that provides life with a third way to adapt to potentially lethal environments. Crucially, it involves neither genetic nor epigenetic changes to…
Earth started as a violent place, its surface churned by continuous volcanic eruptions and cloaked in an atmosphere that would have been poisonous to today’s life-forms. Furthermore, the thin primeval atmosphere may have provided only scant protection from the young sun’s harsh ultraviolet glare. Given these inhospitable conditions, scientists have long wondered: How did the…