An influential group of geologists, ecologists, and biologists argue that humans have so changed the planet that it is entering another phase of geological time, called the Anthropocene, “the Age of Man.”
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…
Scientists at the University of Cambridge have used cutting-edge infrared surveys of the sky to discover a new population of enormous, rapidly growing supermassive black holes in the early Universe. The black holes were previously undetected because they sit cocooned within thick layers of dust. The new study, published in the journal Monthly Notices of…
The mysterious common ancestor of all life on Earth may have been more complex than before thought—a sophisticated organism with an intricate structure, scientists now suggest. Author Metanexus Editors
The simplicity of modern life is making us more stupid, according to a scientific theory which claims humanity may have reached its intellectual and emotional peak as early as 4,000 BC.
The recent Antarctic Peninsula temperature rise and associated ice loss is unusual but not unprecedented, according to research. Analysis of a 364m-long ice core containing several millennia of climate history shows the region previously basked in temperatures slightly higher than today. However, the peninsula is now warming rapidly, threatening previously stable areas of ice, the…
Officials at the U.S. space agency NASA say they uncovered the secrets of the supernova. New data from the Swift orbiting telescope have revealed exactly what leads to Type Ia supernovas, which astronomers now believe start as a white dwarf orbiting a companion star that pulls a stream of matter from it. As the gas…