The two telescopes were designed to gaze down upon Earth from space to collect intelligence. Now, NASA hopes to repurpose the instruments to study dark energy, extrasolar planets, and a host of other questions in astronomy. The telescopes were originally supposed to be deployed by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which manages the nation’s spy…
In the run-up to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in Brazil, much has been written about how to define sustainable development; the balance between environmental sustainability and human development; the kinds of goals and targets that might be adopted; and how these might then relate to goals that follow on from the Millennium Development…
Lucid dreaming technically refers to any occasion when the sleeper is aware they are dreaming. But it is also used to describe the idea of being able to control those dreams. Once confined to a handful of niche groups, interest in lucid dreaming has grown in recent years, spurred on by a spate of innovations…
One hundred thousand years ago, several humanlike species walked the Earth. There were tribes of stocky Neanderthals eking out an existence in Europe and northwest Asia, and bands of cave-dwelling Denisovans in Asia. A diminutive, hobbitlike people called Homo floresiensis inhabited Indonesia. What were essentially modern humans roamed Africa. Then, about 60,000 years ago, a…
Mention creationism, and many scientists think of the United States, where efforts to limit the teaching of evolution have made headway in a couple of states. But the successes are modest compared with those in South Korea, where the anti-evolution sentiment seems to be winning its battle with mainstream science. A petition to remove references…
A team of researchers has announced the discovery of Afrasia djijidae, a new fossil primate from Myanmar that illuminates a critical step in the evolution of early anthropoids — the group that includes humans, apes, and monkeys. The 37-million-year-old Afrasia closely resembles another early anthropoid, Afrotarsius libycus, recently discovered at a site of similar age…
Roughly 100,000 years ago, human evolution reached a mysterious bottleneck: Our ancestors had been reduced to perhaps five to ten thousand individuals living in Africa. In time, “behaviorally modern” humans would emerge from this population, expanding dramatically in both number and range, and replacing all other co-existing evolutionary cousins, such as the Neanderthals. The cause…
Researchers are calling it the “Goldilocks Effect”: Turns out that babies’ brains are wired to focus on “just right” experiences and information to help them learn. In a fascinating new study from the University of Rochester, 7- and 8-month-olds quickly lost interest in video animations of balls, pacifiers and colorful boxes that were too ho-hum…
Millions of years ago, oversized insects like griffinflies boasting wingspans comparable to today’s hawks scuttled across (and fluttered above) the planet. But why these jumbo jets of the insect world shrunk to modern size has remained a mystery, until now. Turns out, as dinosaurs evolved flight and eventually took to the skies as birds, they…
Nearly 20,000 species of animals and plants around the globe are considered high risks for extinction in the wild. That’s according to the most authoritative compilation of living things at risk — the so-called Red List maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. This should keep us awake at night. By generalizing from…