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.
This time, they say, Einstein might really be wrong. A high-octane debate has broken out among the world’s physicists about what would happen if you jumped into a black hole, a fearsome gravitational monster that can swallow matter, energy and even light. You would die, of course, but how? Crushed smaller than a dust mote…
The DARPA Robotics Challenge kicked into high gear this week as the organization announced the top teams competing to create robots that can prevent the compounding of human peril in man-made and natural disasters. Spurred by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in which the “Fukushima 50” ventured into a nightmare scenario to prevent a nuclear…
Gen Xers are surprisingly blasé about climate change. A survey in 2009 found members of Generation X were largely disengaged from climate change. Two years later, these American adults became slightly more so, a follow-up survey has revealed. Americans in this age group generally are not well-informed about climate change, nor are they highly concerned…
First there was the “impact factor.” Then came the “h-index.” Now, for those who believe that scientific prowess can be measured by statistical metrics, comes the Acuna-Allesina-Kording formula. The formula, outlined in the journal Nature, is intended to improve upon the h-index—a tally of a researcher’s publications and citations—by adding a few more numerical measures…
The Defense Department recently announced new policies that ease restrictions on jobs women can do in the military, opening up more than 14,000 positions to women and allowing them closer than ever to the front lines. But embedded in that news was a long list of positions that are still closed to women, including infantry…
Typically, when we talk about pollution, including carbon emissions, the numbers are talking about entire areas rather than specific locations. Researchers in the US have developed a new software system that is able to accurately map carbon emissions at the street level. The new system allows you to see each individual building, and the carbon…