Scientists have finally cracked a decades-old spaceflight riddle, figuring out why NASA’s Pioneer 10 and 11 probes began to slow mysteriously as they sped far from the sun. The cause of the so-called “Pioneer Anomaly,” it turns out, is heat coming from the electrical current flowing through the probes’ instrument and power systems. This heat…
The word “house” generally conjures images of rectangular dwellings with front porches and chimneys. Front lawns and garages too. But fast forward a few hundred years and the traditional four walls and a roof won’t be standard housing fare, according to urban experts. Climate change, population growth and geo-political shifts are already redefining the way…
Dolphins may use complex nonlinear mathematics when hunting, according to a new study that suggests these brainy marine mammals could be far more skilled at math than was ever thought possible before. Inspiration for the new study, published in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society A, came after lead author Tim Leighton watched an…
The popping of champagne corks may have subsided since scientists presented convincing evidence for the existence of the long-sought Higgs boson, but the work has just begun for theoretical particle physicists, who are revelling in the biggest glut of data they’ve had since the 1990s. Many are working evenings and weekends to interpret the results,…
With large swaths of oceans, rivers that snake for hundreds of miles, and behemoth glaciers near the north and south poles, Earth doesn’t seem to have a water shortage. And yet, less than 1% of our planet’s mass is locked up in water, and even that may have been delivered by comets and asteroids after…
Laser physicists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have broken the record for the highest-power laser shot with a collection of beams delivering more than 500 trillion watts of peak power. The National Ignition Facility fired 192 beams at the same time, delivering 1.85 megajoules of ultraviolet laser light to a target a mere two…
An iceberg twice the size of Manhattan tore off one of Greenland’s largest glaciers. For several years, scientists had been watching a long crack in the floating ice shelf of the northerly Petermann Glacier. Now, NASA satellites show it has broken completely, forming an iceberg covering 46 square miles. The same glacier spawned an iceberg…
Rep. Lamar Smith, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, may be getting ready to support legislation to grant green cards to holders of advanced degrees in the so-called STEM fields. The Texas republican, the gatekeeper on immigration bills in the House, is being urged to take action by a broad coalition of groups, including…
The new science of self-control shows that religious themes can bolster willpower
The headline on the press release about a new report warns of “R&D trends posing a threat” to the U.S. economy. Scary words, to be sure, especially coming from the presidentially appointed National Science Board, the policy-setting body for the $7 billion a year National Science Foundation. But the data upon which the board bases…