The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is often invoked outside the realm of physics to describe how the act of observing something changes the thing being observed, or to point out that there’s a limit to how well we can ever really understand the universe. While the subtleties of the uncertainty principle are often lost on nonphysicists,…
A new study has found that over the last several decades, nature has increasingly taken a back seat in award-winning children’s picture books — and suggests this sobering trend is consistent with a growing isolation from the natural world. A group of researchers reviewed the winners and honor books receiving the prestigious Caldecott Medal from…
Men may not become extinct after all, according to a new study. Previous research has suggested the Y sex chromosome, which only men carry, is decaying genetically so fast that it will be extinct in five million years’ time. A gene within the chromosome is the switch which leads to testes development and the secretion…
Scientists have measured the fastest winds yet observed from a stellar-mass black hole, shedding light on the behavior of these curious cosmic objects. The winds, clocked by astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, are racing through space at 20 million mph, or about 3 percent the speed of light. That’s nearly 10 times faster than…
In the dark abyss of the world’s deepest known cave lurks a newfound species of primitive eyeless insect, one that researchers are calling the deepest land animal ever found. The creature is one of four newly discovered species of wingless insects called springtails, which commonly live in total darkness in caves, where they feed on…
When the Obama administration declared that employees of Catholic institutions must have contraception covered in their health plans (before the president’s deft backtracking compromise), one group of religious Americans stood firmly opposed to Obama’s original position. No, it wasn’t Catholics. Despite the bishops’ howls of protest, poll after poll showed Catholics supporting the administration’s new…
In three stars far, far away, one of the rarest elements known to man has been spotted, improving our understanding about how heavy elements are created, bolstering evidence that a rare type of supernova may have been responsible for their creation. Tellurium — a brittle and toxic semiconducting metal — has for the first time…
Just as species are thought to have evolved over time, the individual molecules that form the basis of life also likely developed in response to natural selection, scientists say. Life on Earth first bloomed around 3.7 billion years ago, when chemical compounds in a “primordial soup” somehow sparked into life, scientists suspect. But what turned…
Most scientists, on achieving high office, keep their public remarks to the bland and reassuring, but Nina Fedoroff, the president of AAAS and one of the world’s most distinguished agricultural scientists, recently broke ranks in a spectacular manner. She confessed that she was now “scared to death” by the anti-science movement that was spreading, uncontrolled,…
Insects cover our planet. Filed into 750,000 different species, at any given time there are one million trillion bugs buzzing around the globe. About 14,000 of those species are blood-feeders, meaning they drink their meals by puncturing the skin of vertebrates, including humans. Besides being a nuisance, blood-feeding insects, such as certain strains of mosquitoes,…