Two studies shed additional light on a murky question: How did the cosmic fog that enveloped the universe in its early days dissipate?
David Gelernter, a pioneering computer scientist, foresaw the modern internet but thinks computers are still too hard to use Author Metanexus Editors
Inequality is growing in the United States, and social mobility is slowing. A study by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that 62 percent of Americans raised in the top one-fifth of the income scale stay in the top two-fifths; 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths. Education, long praised as…
Oxygen makes up a smaller percentage of the core than scientists had thought, suggests a study in Nature. Knowing the core’s contents helps researchers better understand how Earth clumped together 4.5 billion years ago, says co-author Yingwei Fei, a geochemist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. Author Metanexus Editors
The spade-toothed beaked whale is so rare that nobody has seen one alive, but scientists have proof the species still exists. Two skeletons were identified as belonging to the species after a 17-foot whale and her calf beached themselves in New Zealand in 2010. Scientists hope the discovery will provide insights into the species and…
Scientists who found well preserved woolly mammoth remains in a remote part of Russia hope they might contain the necessary material to clone the long extinct beast. The Russian-led international team found the remains, including fur and bone marrow, with some cell nuclei intact, in the Ust-Yansk area of the Yakutia region on Russia’s Arctic…
Sometimes, I read a news item that pretty much overturns an entire class of pedagogy in my head. Take, for example, the discovery that virus particles steal and repurpose a bacteria’s immune system, and use it against them. My first thought was “holy crap, bacteria have an adaptive immune system?!” Then I remembered reading something…