A sprawling collection of galaxies and star clusters surrounding our own Milky Way is challenging long-standing theories on the existence of dark matter, the mysterious substance thought to pervade the universe. The structure of satellite galaxies and star clusters around the Milky Way is so vast that it reaches across a million light-years – 10…
Grand theories of social evolution have, in the past, proved to be useless as guides to events, but that has in no way dented the popularity of such theories. These theories show the continuing appeal of scientism—the modern belief that scientific inquiry can enable us to resolve conflicts and dilemmas in contexts where traditional sources…
Geomagnetic storms generated by the interaction between the electrically charged solar particles and the earth’s own magnetic field could have serious consequences. They are able to overload electricity supply networks and cause breakdowns, cause communications and navigation satellites to fail, and endanger astronauts.
How does literary style evolve? Surprisingly, clues lie in words with seemingly little meaning, such as “to” and “that”. By analyzing how writers use such “content-free” words, mathematician Daniel Rockmore and colleagues at Dartmouth College were able to conduct the first, large-scale “stylometric” analysis of literature. Content-free words are indicative of writing style, Rockmore says….
Spooky quantum entanglement just got spookier. Entanglement is a weird state where two particles remain intimately connected, even when separated over vast distances, like two die that must always show the same numbers when rolled. For the first time, scientists have entangled particles after they’ve been measured and may no longer even exist. If that…
Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest laws continue to shape human evolution in the modern age, research has shown.
A prevalent understanding, particularly in the 1980s, was that boys and girls are born cognitively the same. It was the way parents and society treated them that made them different. Since then, a preponderance of research has called this belief into question. The majority of today’s psychologists agree that some of the differences exhibited by…
From Barbara King at NPR’s 13:7, a blog set at the intersection of science and culture: There’s no language gene. There’s no innate language organ or module in the human brain dedicated to the production of grammatical language. There are no meaningful human universals when it comes to how people construct sentences to communicate with each other….
Conventional wisdom deems smaller classes superior. John Boyer a professor at Virginia Tech and a self-described “Podunk instructor,” calls that “poppycock.” He’s exploring how technology can help engage students in face-to-face courses that enroll from 600 to nearly 3,000 students. It’s a timely project that may suggest tips for others. In a recent survey of…
A new estimate of the number of habitable planets orbiting the most common type of stars in our galaxy could have huge consequences for the search for life. According to a recent study, tens of billions of planets around red dwarfs are likely capable of containing liquid water, dramatically increasing the potential to find signs…