Many mysteries surround black holes, but new research led by the Niels Bohr Institute has come up with groundbreaking new theories that might explain several of their more mysterious properties. The new study reveals that black holes have properties that resemble the dynamics of both solids and liquids. Black holes are extremely compact, so compact…
Astronomers have spotted seven galaxies that existed just a few hundred million years after the universe’s birth, including one that may be the oldest found to date. The potential record-holding galaxy, known as UDFj-39546284, likely existed when the universe was just 380 million years old, researchers said, and may be the farthest galaxy ever seen….
How does evolution innovate? We exist because our ancestors have had the ability to adapt successfully to changes in their environment; however, merely examining present-day organisms can limit our understanding of the actual evolutionary processes because the crucial events have been masked by the passage of aeons — what we need is a time machine….
With the temperature at a balmy midsummer -17c, drilling has started in Antarctica in an attempt to find evidence of life under a sheet of ice two miles thick. The scientists and engineers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) hope to find signs of life in the pitch black, intensely cold, nutrient poor, and pristine…
Over the past couple of days, two asteroids ‘2012 XE54’ and ‘4179 Toutatis’ passed close to Earth. 4179 Toutatis, a lumpy shaped asteroid which is roughly 3 miles long, is classified as a potentially hazardous object (PHO) by astronomers and has passed closed to Earth several times before, in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008….
A decade ago, a British philosopher put forth the notion that the universe we live in might in fact be a computer simulation run by our descendants. While that seems far-fetched, perhaps even incomprehensible, a team of physicists at the University of Washington has come up with a potential test to see if the idea…
There is, in this crazy world, one thing we know for sure: Our world is the world. Our planet is the planet — for creating life, for supporting life, for letting us humans and our fellow species become what we are. And so, as we take our first tentative steps from a warm, watery Earth…
University of North Dakota scientist Mark Hoffmann’s version of Star Search goes a long way — a very long way — out into the universe. Hoffmann and his Norwegian colleagues Tryve Helgaker, E.I. Tellgren and K. Lange have discovered a molecular-level interaction that science had puzzled over for decades but had never seen. That discovery,…
In a blow to those people who believe that global warming predictions are just a lot of hot air, an international team has established that predictions made 20 years ago are turning out pretty accurate. The report compares predictions from the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report, published in 1990, with real-world…
A bundle of recent genetic studies have suggested that modern humans had sex with Neanderthals thousands of years ago when the two populations roamed the planet alongside each other. However, the bones left behind by the two species don’t bear any obvious traces of interbreeding and a new study of monkeys in Mexico shows why…