Technology and society: The “maker” movement could change how science is taught and boost innovation. It may even herald a new industrial revolution
In the early 1970s, David J. Gross exposed the hidden structure of the atomic nucleus. He helped to reinvent string theory in the 1980s. In 2004, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. And today he struggles mightily to describe the basic forces of nature at the Planck scale (billions of times smaller than a…
Add methane emissions to the growing list of environmental risks posed by fracking. Opposition to the hydraulic fracturing of deep shales to release natural gas rose sharply last year over worries that the large volumes of chemical-laden water used in the operations could contaminate drinking water. Then, in early January, earthquakes in Ohio were blamed…
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured images of three odd galaxies that may help scientists solve a 13 billion-year cosmic mystery. The galaxies are so old and faint that astronomers nicknamed them “ghost galaxies” in a description. The objects are among the smallest and faintest galaxies near our own Milky Way galaxy, researchers said. “These…
The task of finding the genetic roots of common disease seems much harder, dimming the promise of personal genomics and the chances of quick medical payoffs from the human genome project, given new data about the human genome in two reports published online in the journal Science. It now appears that large numbers of very…
The word “house” generally conjures images of rectangular dwellings with front porches and chimneys. Front lawns and garages too. But fast forward a few hundred years and the traditional four walls and a roof won’t be standard housing fare, according to urban experts. Climate change, population growth and geo-political shifts are already redefining the way…
Astronomers are reporting that they have taken the measure of the biggest, baddest black holes yet found in the universe, abyssal yawns 10 times the size of our solar system into which billions of Suns have vanished like a guilty thought. Such holes, they say, might be the gravitational cornerstones of galaxies and clues to…