At 10:31 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5, after nearly nine months of travel, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission (with a rover named Curiosity) will arrive at the Red Planet. The $2.5 billion rover will begin a two-year quest to explore the interior of Mars’ Gale Crater and hunt for evidence of an ancient ocean there….
Even a multimillion-dollar donation does not ensure a spot in heaven. Or at least that’s what most religions believe. But a $5-million academic grant, to be centered at UC Riverside, may go a long way toward gaining insights into the possibility of an afterlife and delving into what science and culture say about immortality. The…
One of the primary forces behind climate change-driven sea level rise is the Greenland Ice Sheet. Covering 80% of Greenland, it’s the world’s second-largest chunk of ice (after the Antarctic Ice Sheet) and dumps 240 billion tons of fresh water into the oceans every year, accounting for a full fifth of annual sea level rise….
NASA and university scientists have made the first measurement-based estimate of the amount and composition of tiny airborne particles that arrive in the air over North America each year. With a 3-D view of the atmosphere now possible from satellites, the scientists calculated that dust, not pollution, is the main ingredient of these imports. According…
Protecting mangroves to lock carbon away in trees may be an economic way to curb climate change, research suggests. Carbon credit schemes already exist for rainforests; the new work suggests mangroves could be included too. But other researchers say the economics depend on the global carbon price. Presenting their results in Proceedings of the National…
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…
In a vacuum, light travels so fast that it would circle Earth more than seven times within the blink of an eye. When light propagates through matter, however, it slows by a factor typically less than 5. This factor, called the refractive index, is positive in naturally occurring materials, and it causes light to bend…
If you’re still skeptical that a tan can be dangerous, consider this: Scientists have found that wild fish are getting skin cancer from ultraviolet radiation. Approximately 15% of coral trout in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef had cancerous lesions on their scales. In that regard, they resemble Australians who live on land — 2 in 3…
In the last 50 years, man has quadrupled his CO2 output, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels. That is a startling and sobering concept. So far, though, Mother Nature seems to be keeping pace. In a new study published in the journal Nature, researchers assert that Earth’s carbon sinks continue to soak up roughly…
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…