The single step that would do the most to reduce inequality has nothing to do with finance at all. It’s an expansion of early childhood education.
The discovery of the first alien planet with two suns — like the “Star Wars” world Tatooine — residing in its parent star’s habitable zone is good news for the search for life beyond Earth, scientists say. The planet, known as Kepler-47c, is a gas giant and therefore probably not suitable for life as we…
Fossil hunters investigating the floor of a 385 million-year-old forest in an excavated upstate New York quarry found evidence of a complex ecosystem teeming with plant life. The journal Nature reported that excavation of the quarry in 2010 allowed researchers to study an intact portion of the forest floor complete with root systems. William Stein,…
Software can transform a computer from a word processor to a number cruncher to a video telephone. But the underlying hardware is unchanged. Now, a type of transistor that can be switched with magnetism instead of electricity could make circuitry malleable too, leading to more efficient and reliable gadgets, from smart phones to satellites. Author…
For linguists, Light Warlpiri provides a unique opportunity to study the creation of a new language — one that doesn’t fit the usual linguistic categories of “dialect,” “pidgin” or “creole.” But more generally, the recognition of a new language is a good reminder that language is a constantly evolving cultural creation. Like biological species, languages…
This year has been a spectacular one for exoplanets. New discoveries and new insights have truly pushed the gateway to other worlds even further open. In the past 12 months we’ve gained increasingly good statistics on the incredible abundance of planets around other stars and their multiplicity. We also finally seem to have evidence that…
Roger Ebert was always a great friend of Salon’s. We’re deeply saddened by reports of his death, and are re-printing this essay, from his book “Life Itself: A Memoir,” which we think fans will take particular comfort in reading now. I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there…