The carbon footprint of the science community is tiny by comparison with the rest of society. Yet changes will not happen if nobody takes the lead. And people who have benefited from a great education and earn by comparison a very good income should surely be well positioned to take on some ethical leadership. Perhaps…
Scientists say the Earth will warm in response to increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, but since the 1970s, they have not made much headway in narrowing down exactly how much it will warm.
When speaking about science to scientists, there is one thing that can be said that will almost always raise their indignation, and that is that science is inherently political and that the practice of science is a political act. Science, they will respond, has nothing to do with politics. But is that true?
Helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon and radioactive radon are odourless, tasteless, practically non-reactive wisps of unconnected atoms. In this material universe, they amount to just about nothing at all. And yet … it would be hard to make a case that any other group of elements has had a greater impact on our understanding of the universe.
Oxygen makes up a smaller percentage of the core than scientists had thought, suggests a study in Nature. Knowing the core’s contents helps researchers better understand how Earth clumped together 4.5 billion years ago, says co-author Yingwei Fei, a geochemist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C.
Jason Silva deconstructs inspiration.
Astronomers have come up with a livability index for alien planets and moons, and the winners are … Titan in our own solar system, and the Gliese 581 planets in the extrasolar league. Rating systems for Earthlike and habitable planets may not make much difference now, but the developers of the Earth Similarity Index and…
Celebrated neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga explains the new science behind an ancient philosophical question.
It’s certainly true that teaching comes naturally to us humans. There’s no culture on Earth without teachers. But just because something’s easy doesn’t mean it’s not special. And in the animal kingdom, teaching is exceedingly rare. In fact, it’s not clear whether any other animal can teach.
A healed fracture discovered on an ancient skull from China may be the oldest documented evidence of violence between humans, a study has shown. The individual, who lived 150,000 to 200,000 years ago, suffered blunt force trauma to the right temple—possibly from being hit with a projectile.