Big History Gets Bigger
A report on the inaugural meeting of the International Big History Association in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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Mysterious Black Hole Type Perplexes, Bewilders
Billions of times the mass of our own sun, so-called massive black holes present a baffling mystery with clues hidden at the very dawn of existence.
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Star’s ‘Cry’ Heralds New Era for Testing Relativity
Last year, astronomers discovered a quiescent black hole in a distant galaxy that erupted after shredding and consuming a passing star. Now researchers have identified a distinctive X-ray signal observed in the days following the outburst that comes from matter on the verge of falling into the black hole. This tell-tale signal, called a quasi-periodic…
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Celebrating Impractical Physicists
Do you think cutting-edge scientists should earn as much as star athletes, celebrity artists or Wall Street bankers? The Russian billionaire investor Yuri Milner does, and this week he put his money where his heart is, depositing $3 million in the bank accounts of each of the nine theoretical physicists he judged to be doing…
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Sediment Cores From Antarctic Seabed Reveal Ancient Rain Forest
Drilling of the seabed off Antarctica has revealed that rainforest grew on the frozen continent 52 million years ago, scientists said, warning it could be ice-free again within decades. The study of sediment cores drilled from the ocean floor off Antarctica’s east coast revealed fossil pollens that had come from a “near-tropical” forest covering the…
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Did Mayas Use 2,500-Year-Old Chocolate as Condiment or Beverage?
Archaeologists say they have found traces of 2,500-year-old chocolate on a plate in the Yucatan peninsula, the first time they have found ancient chocolate residue on a plate rather than a cup, suggesting it may have been used as a condiment or sauce with solid food. Experts have long thought cacao beans and pods were…
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Higgs Boson Results From LHC ‘Get Even Stronger’
The Higgs boson-like particle whose discovery was announced on 4 July looks significantly more certain to exist. The particle has been the subject of a decades-long hunt as the last missing piece of physics’ Standard Model, explaining why matter has mass. Now one Higgs-hunting team at the Large Hadron Collider report a “5.9 sigma” levels…
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Colossal Human Sculpture Unearthed in Turkey
Archaeologists in southeastern Turkey have discovered an enormous stone sculpture of a Neo-Hittite warrior-king daring from the first millennium B.C.
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Did Expelled Stars Reionize the Ancient Universe?
Hot stars booted out of their galactic homes may be responsible for creating the conditions that led to today’s universe
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Want to Live on Mars? Here’s Your Chance
Just as NASA’s latest rover prepares to land on the surface of Mars, one Dutch company is looking to up the ante, with plans to send humans to the distant red planet. But before you sign up for travels to faraway lands, you may want to take note that the trip is a one-way deal,…