Scientists say the Earth will warm in response to increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, but since the 1970s, they have not made much headway in narrowing down exactly how much it will warm.
Life may have gotten its start inland, inside ponds of volcanic condensate, not in the oceans. Modern life is more chemically compatible with conditions in venting geothermal fields, such as Yellowstone National Park, than in the ocean, even a primitive ocean, new analysis shows. The finding challenges a widely accepted theory that modern life began…
In a special issue on human conflict, Science Magazine considers the deep evolutionary roots of violent confrontation – tracing the trajectory of violence and war throughout history, exploring racism, ethnic conflicts, the rise of terrorism, and the possible future of armed conflicts. The editors also consider our innate capacity to mediate conflict and our ability…
Today I’d like to go back to a topic that leaves most people perplexed, me included: the nature of consciousness and how it “emerges” in our brains. I wrote about this a few months ago, promising to get back to it. At this point, no scientist or philosopher in the world knows how to answer…
One of the lowest mass supermassive black holes ever observed in the middle of a galaxy has been identified, thanks to NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and several other observatories. The host galaxy is of a type not expected to harbor supermassive black holes, suggesting that this black hole, while related to its supermassive cousins, may…
Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have built a quantum processor that can factor a composite number – in this case the number 15 – into its constituent prime factors, 3 and 5. While the math may not be much of an achievement, performing it successfully is an important step towards factoring much larger numbers, with…
Just in time for the Christmas holiday, Vatican Radio announced that Pope Benedict XVI will be launching a new digital ministry (of sorts) through a Twitter feed with the handle @Pontifex. With the encouragement of Twitter director of social innovation, Claire Diaz Ortiz, Il Papa will extend this engagement into digital space, broadcasting 140-character messages…