Scientists’ greatest pleasure comes from theories that derive the solution to some deep puzzle from a small set of simple principles in a surprising way. These explanations are called “beautiful” or “elegant”. Historical examples are Kepler’s explanation of complex planetary motions as simple ellipses, Bohr’s explanation of the periodic table of the elements in terms…
A flash point has emerged in American science education that echoes the battle over evolution, as scientists and educators report mounting resistance to the study of man-made climate change in middle and high schools. Although scientific evidence increasingly shows that fossil fuel consumption has caused the climate to change rapidly, the issue has grown so…
“I have a dream,” declared Martin Luther King, in a speech that has lost none of its power to inspire. And some of that dream has come true. When King spoke in the summer of 1963, America was a nation that denied basic rights to millions of its citizens, simply because their skin was the…
Members of the public are being asked to join the hunt for nearby planets that could support life.Volunteers can go to the Planethunters website to see time-lapsed images of 150,000 stars, taken by the Kepler space telescope. They will be advised on the signs that indicate the presence of a planet and how to alert…
Simple, inexpensive measures to cut emissions of two common pollutants will slow global warming, save millions of lives and boost crop production around the world, an international team of scientists. The climate-change debate has centered on carbon dioxide, a gas that wafts in the atmosphere for decades, trapping heat. But in recent years, scienti have…
From a sufferer’s perspective, anxiety is not epochal. It is always and absolutely personal. “The Age of Anxiety” is a phrase that has been used to characterize the consciousness of our era, the awareness of everything perilous about the modern world: the degradation of the environment, nuclear energy, religious fundamentalism, threats to privacy and the…
It’s another batch of newly discovered earth-like planets, according to NASA officials. U.S. space agency officials announced they have discovered another series of planets, the latest such planets to hit the space agency radar. The space agency said the latest discover reveals some of the smallest earth-like planets yet discovered. Space agency officials said the…
Wind speeds over the Southern Ocean have been increasing over the past three decades and those stronger winds are boosting birds in the area to faster flying speeds, according to new research. The wind speed shift is linked to climate change in the study, which was published in the latest issue of Science. The impact,…
President Barack Obama’s proposal to eliminate the Commerce Department promises to reignite sharp debates about the best home for its sizable but patchwork research and technology portfolio. The Commerce Department now includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and the…
Researchers in China compared brain scans of young people with “internet addiction disorder” with their peers and found damage to the white matter fibres connecting emotional processing, attention and decision making parts. Similar impairments have been found in research into other addictions including alcohol and cocaine. This news comes after researchers at the University of…