Astronomers may have, for the first time, directly imaged a planet still in the process of formation, gathering material from a debris disk surrounding its parent star.
Plants flowering 8.5 times faster than predicted; changes have knock-on effect for food chain, ecosystems
For the first time, scientists have caught a glimpse of a comet’s final minutes before it was vaporized by the sun. The comet was flying at about 1.4 million miles an hour.
Nature looks ahead to the key findings and events that may emerge in 2013. Author Metanexus Editors
Research by a Danish physicist suggests that the explosion of massive stars – supernovae – near the Solar System has strongly influenced the development of life. Professor Henrik Svensmark of the Technical University of Denmark sets out his novel work in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. When the…
President Barack Obama promised to take action on climate change in his inaugural speech, putting the issue at the forefront of his agenda for the second term. Americans’ obligations are not just to self, “but to all posterity,” Obama said. “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do…
Scientists have picked up fragments of people’s thoughts by decoding the brain activity caused by words that they hear. The remarkable feat has given researchers fresh insight into how the brain processes language, and raises the tantalizing prospect of devices that can return speech to the speechless. Though in its infancy, the work paves the…