Scientists Discover Frozen Organic Material on Mercury
Messenger spacecraft finds substances similar to tar or coal in craters on planet nearest sun
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Human Evolution Enters Exciting New Phase
If you could escape the human time scale for a moment, and regard evolution from the perspective of deep time, in which the last 10,000 years are a short chapter in a long saga, you’d say: Things are pretty wild right now. In the most massive study of genetic variation yet, published in Nature, researchers…
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The Brain Chemistry of Social and Sexual Monogamy
It’s true that the successful may indeed be more likely to commit adultery, but not for the reasons usually cited, such as their supposed sense of entitlement. It also conflates social monogamy with sexual monogamy, assuming that these complicated sets of behaviors are one and the same. The difference between social and sexual monogamy is…
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Collective Intelligence: A Dialogue With Thomas W. Malone
As all the people and computers on our planet get more and more closely connected, it’s becoming increasingly useful to think of all the people and computers on the planet as a kind of global brain. It’s important to realize that intelligence is not just something that happens inside individual brains. It also arises with…
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Laws Governing Brain Development May Also Control Growth of Universe
The universe is neither a computer nor a brain, but there are surprisingly similar laws to rule them all.
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Gargantuan Black Hole Baffles Scientists
A hunt for supermassive black holes reveals a monstrous one at the heart of galaxy NGC 1277, which may force theorists to rethink their understanding of black holes.
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NASA Pours Cold Water on Doomsday Prophecy
Quashing the ‘doomsday’ rumors, top NASA scientists have assured that the world won’t end on December 21, 2012. “The world will not end in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012,” NASA said on its website….
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A World Without History
According to Aristotelian philosophy, earth was eternal, a world without history and with no end. Only with the advent of religions based on the promise of a final salvation – supposedly after the end of time – it became of great interest for philosophers and scholars to calculate the age and understand the possible lifespan…
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Cracked Wheat: Scientists Make Inroads Into Wheat Genome
A consortium of scientists announced they had made major progress in deciphering the genome of bread wheat, a vital crop whose DNA is notoriously complex. Publishing in the journal Nature, they said they had analysed between 94,000 and 96,000 genes in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum). The plant’s genome is nearly five times as big as…
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2012 Arctic Ice Melt Larger Than Size of United States
Arctic sea ice reached its lowest extent on record and the first ten months of 2012 were among the hottest on record again, according to the United Nations’ global climate office, which said “climate change is taking place before our eyes.” January through October 2012 was the ninth warmest on record since 1850, despite cooler…