Atmospheric oxygen really took off on our planet about 2.4 billion years ago during the Great Oxygenation Event. At this key juncture of our planet’s evolution, species had either to learn to cope with this poison that was produced by photosynthesizing cyanobacteria or they went extinct. It now seems strange to think that the gas…
Most people learn to count when they are children. Yet surprisingly, not all languages have words for numbers. A recent study shows that a few tongues lack number words and as a result, people in these cultures have a difficult time performing common quantitative tasks. The findings add new insight to the way people acquire…
Considered to be one of the greatest scientists of all time, Sir Isaac Newton was also an influential theologian who applied a scientific approach to the study of scripture, Hebrew and Jewish mysticism. Now Israel’s national library has digitized Newton’s theological collection — some 7,500 pages in his own handwriting — and put it online….
Researchers from King’s College London have provided the first experimental evidence confirming a great British mathematician’s theory of how biological patterns such as tiger stripes or leopard spots are formed. The study not only demonstrates a mechanism which is likely to be widely relevant in vertebrate development, but also provides confidence that chemicals called morphogens,…
DARPA has funds set aside in its budget for 2012 that will pour $7 million into a plan that sounds much like the James Cameron flick Avatar. DARPA says the goal of the plan is to “develop interfaces and algorithms to enable a soldier to effectively partner with a semi-autonomous bi-pedal machine and allow it…
Scientists have taken a first early step toward escaping the limits of a technological principle called Moore’s Law by creating a working transistor using a single phosphorus atom. The atom was etched into a silicon bed with “gates” to control electrical flow and metallic contacts to apply voltage, researchers reported in the journal Nature Nanotechnology….
The origins of Stonehenge have long baffled historians – was it intended as a monument for the dead, a celestial observatory, a place or healing?
Earth is the planet of the plants—and it all can be traced back to one green cell. The world’s lush profusion of photosynthesizers—from towering redwoods to ubiquitous diatoms—owe their existence to a tiny alga eons ago that swallowed a cyanobacteria and turned it into an internal solar power plant. By studying the genetics of a…
Despite great medical advances that have lengthened human life spans, your chances of living a very long life may be lower than you’d hoped. That’s the conclusion of a study by two longevity experts who reviewed the standard models that predict mortality rates and turned up a major error. Instead of confirming that death rates…
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson relates his personal story of how he became a scientist and his peak spiritual experiences in doing science—including his comprehension that “we are made of stardust!”