The second-largest mass extinction in Earth’s history coincided with a short but intense ice age during which enormous glaciers grew and sea levels dropped. Although it has long been agreed that the so-called Late Ordovician mass extinction — which occurred about 450 million years ago — was related to climate change, exactly how the climate…
When middleweight stars near the end of their cosmic lives, they shrug off their outer layers, shedding up to half their mass. But just how the stars manage to dispel so much material has been a mystery, though a new study may hold clues to closing the case. Astronomers have found that dust grains in…
From the Smithsonian’s Dinosaur Tracking blog: Somewhere, out in the interstellar void, there may be a planet inhabited by hyper-advanced dinosaurs. At least, that’s what a new paper by Columbia University chemist Ronald Breslow says. One idea, favored by Breslow, is that meteorites carried specific types of amino acids and other organic flotsam to earth around 4…
Working together can hasten brain evolution, according to a new computer simulation. When programmed to navigate challenging cooperative tasks, the artificial neural networks set up by scientists to serve as mini-brains “learned” to work together, evolving the virtual equivalent of boosted brainpower over generations. The findings support a long-held theory that social interactions may have…
Humans now consume some 18 trillion watts of energy in a variety of forms. Every aspect of our contemporary lives depends on this tremendous flow of energy.
The United States is at risk of ceding its leadership in science, a number of physicists said, though there was less of a consensus on a clear solution to the problem. Five physicists shared their worries about America’s scientific future during a panel discussion at the April 2012 meeting of the American Physics Society, agreeing…
Some scientists are searching not just for any life out there in the universe, but for our distant relatives. Earth may have seeded life on other planets if an asteroid smacking into Earth sprayed DNA into space, researchers suggest. Now a team of researchers is searching for siblings of the sun — stars born from…
The same conditions that make the Atacama, Earth’s driest desert, so inhospitable make it beguiling for astronomy. In northern Chile, it is far from big cities, with little light pollution. Its arid climate prevents radio signals from being absorbed by water droplets. The altitude, as high as the Himalaya base camps for climbers preparing to…
Fifty-five million years ago, the world abruptly warmed by a scorching 5 degrees Celsius, the oceans turned acidic, and life ran a gantlet of extinction. Sound familiar? That was the closest nature ever came to foreshadowing the fossil-fuel-fed warming that is just getting underway now. But for 15 years, climate scientists have puzzled over how…
Though scientists have suspected for a while that a giant black hole lurks at the center of our galaxy, they still can’t say for sure it’s the explanation for the strange behavior observed there. Now researchers are closer than ever to being able to image this region and probe the physics at work – potentially…