When American voters re-elected Barack Obama as president, they extended the White House stay of an administration that has focused on expanding federal student aid as well as tightening regulations on colleges and universities. Economic concerns took center stage over the course of the 2012 presidential race, as both campaigns sought to make the case…
The rate of star formation in the universe has dropped to just 3% of its long-ago peak, and there’s no end in sight to the decline, a new study finds. A team of astronomers has determined that the rate of star birth peaked around 11 billion years ago, just 2.7 billion years after the Big…
Archaeologists say they have unearthed an almost 2,400-year-old golden hoard in an ancient Thracian tomb in northern Bulgaria. The treasure was found near the village of Sveshtari, 250 miles northeast of Sofia. Team leader Diana Gergova said that among the artifacts, dating back to the end of the fourth or the beginning of the third…
Climate scientists agree the Earth will be hotter by the end of the century, but their simulations don’t agree on how much. Now a new study suggests the gloomier predictions may be closer to the mark. “Warming is likely to be on the high side of the projections,” said John Fasullo of the National Center…
Massive declines in coral reefs, mangrove swamps and wetlands.
In celebrating his reelection, President Obama finally touched on a topic that he and Republican rival Mitt Romney rarely broached during the campaign: Climate change. During his acceptance speech, Obama make a strong play to win over the green sector, ranking environmental action high up on his priority list. “We want our children to live…
The movement of electrons across tiny distances between metals has the power to change the colour of the gap. Nanophotonics researchers discovered that spaces smaller than a nanometre between metals undergo observable colour changes thanks to the movement of electrons in the surrounding area — meaning the scientists could see quantum mechanical processes in action….
They may be lethal, leathery, and literally armored to the teeth, but crocodiles and alligators, it turns out, are sensitive types. Their snouts, in fact, are even more touch-sensitive than human fingertips, a new study says. Part of the crocodilian reptile order, alligators have some 4,000 of tiny, raised black spots, or domes, on their…
NASA is serious about sending astronauts back to the moon’s neighborhood and will likely unveil its ambitious plans soon now that President Barack Obama has been re-elected, experts say. The space agency has apparently been thinking about setting up a manned outpost beyond the moon’s far side, both to establish a human presence in deep…
Astronomers have detected an alien planet that may be capable of supporting life as we know it — and it’s just a stone’s throw from Earth in the cosmic scheme of things. The newfound exoplanet, a so-called “super-Earth” called HD 40307g, is located inside its host star’s habitable zone, a just-right range of distances where…