Even in stringent times, it seems like a good idea to do some science to find out what the world is made of and how it works.
Imagine a scientist who does an experiment, and doesn’t like the results. Perhaps the scientist had hoped to see a certain pattern of findings and is disappointed that it’s not there. Suppose that this scientist therefore decided to manipulate the data. She goes into the spreadsheet and adds new, made-up data points, until she obtains…
The mammoth storm that caused severe flooding, damage and fatalities to the eastern U.S. will raise pressure on Congress and the next president to address the impacts of climate change as the price tag for extreme weather disasters escalates. Hurricane Sandy devastated the east coast of the United States, claiming dozens of lives so far,…
For the past 50 years—since the discovery of a thousand-year-old Viking way station in Newfoundland—archaeologists and amateur historians have combed North America’s east coast searching for traces of Viking visitors. It has been a long, fruitless quest, littered with bizarre claims and embarrassing failures. But at a conference in Canada early in October, archaeologist Patricia…
The answer to the enduring question of the smallest thing in the universe has evolved along with humanity. People once thought grains of sand were the building blocks of what we see around us. Then the atom was discovered, and it was thought indivisible, until it was split to reveal protons, neutrons and electrons inside….
From the darkened living rooms of Lower Manhattan to the wave-battered shores of Lake Michigan, the question is occurring to millions of people at once: Did the enormous scale and damage from Hurricane Sandy have anything to do with climate change? Hesitantly, climate scientists are offering an answer that is likely to satisfy no one,…
A University of Delaware-led research team reports an advance in the journal Science that may help astrophysicists more accurately analyze the vast molecular clouds of gas and dust where stars are born. Krzysztof Szalewicz, professor of physics and astronomy, was the principal investigator on the National Science Foundation funded research project, which solved equations of…