A potentially habitable alien planet — one that scientists say is the best candidate yet to harbor water, and possibly even life, on its surface — has been found around a nearby star. The planet is located in the habitable zone of its host star, which is a narrow circumstellar region where temperatures are neither…
An area of the brain associated with understanding the minds of others is larger in people who have bigger social networks, a new study finds. The study is one of several that have linked specific brain regions to an active social life. In research published last year, scientists found that some brain regions that process…
The tip of a girl’s 40,000-year-old pinky finger found in a cold Siberian cave, paired with faster and cheaper genetic sequencing technology, is helping scientists draw a surprisingly complex new picture of human origins. The new view is fast supplanting the traditional idea that modern humans triumphantly marched out of Africa about 50,000 years ago,…
Quantum entanglement is such a mainstay of modern physics that it is worth reflecting on how long it took to emerge. What began as a perceptive but vague insight by Albert Einstein languished for decades before becoming a branch of experimental physics and, increasingly, modern technology. In 1964 John Bell figured out how to convert…
Scientists have picked up fragments of people’s thoughts by decoding the brain activity caused by words that they hear. The remarkable feat has given researchers fresh insight into how the brain processes language, and raises the tantalizing prospect of devices that can return speech to the speechless. Though in its infancy, the work paves the…
For the very first time, a NASA spacecraft has detected matter from outside our solar system — material that came from elsewhere in the galaxy. This so-called interstellar material was spotted by NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), a spacecraft that is studying the edge of the solar system from its orbit about 200,000 miles (322,000…
For the research subjects’ sacred values, the ones they wouldn’t give up on for any amount of money (they could ‘auction off their value’ for up to $100), what lit up in the brain were areas known to be involved in right-wrong decisions, not in cost-benefit/utilitarian parts of the brain. That is, we naturally go…
If continuing brain research does in fact show biochemical differences between the brains of those who help others and the brains of those who do not, could this lead to a “morality pill”—a drug that makes us more likely to help? Given the many other studies linking biochemical conditions to mood and behavior, and the…
Recent media stories suggest that anti-aging medicine may soon change from fantasy into a scientifically realistic prospect. If anti-aging medicine is to become a reality, then the various theories about how to halt or reverse the aging process will require testing on human subjects. Carrying out such tests will place unprecedented pressure on the rules…
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has long been understood to be not only antagonistic to the facts of climate science, but hostile. But in a remarkable example of their unabashed bias, they recently published an opinion piece that not only repeats many of the flawed and misleading arguments about climate science, but purports to…