Could the United States establish a moon colony and develop a new propulsion system for going to Mars? All within eight years of a Newt Gingrich presidency, as Mr. Gingrich promised this week? The answers seem to be technologically yes, economically iffy and politically very difficult. In proposing an ambitious vision for space, Mr. Gingrich…
American values. President Barack Obama wants to restore them. So does Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. Newt Gingrich says he articulates them. Other presidential candidates, politicians and commentators have plenty to say about them as well. But what exactly are they talking about? What are American values? The answer: It depends.
Jumping spiders, which hunt by pouncing on their prey, gauge distances to their unsuspecting meals in a way that appears to be unique in the animal kingdom, a new study finds. The superability boils down to seeing green. Scientists in Japan discovered that the arachnids accurately sense distances by comparing a blurry version of an…
Life found in underwater caves in the Bahamas could give clues to what types of marine life might be found on distant planets and moons, researchers say. Discoveries made in so-called blue holes by Texas A&M University at Galveston researchers include specialized forms of bacteria life at different depths, suggesting that microbial life in such…
Fundamental particles are the building blocks of matter, and, apparently, come in many more flavors than the basic few that make up the atoms we’re familiar with. Flavor is the name scientists give to different versions of the same type of particle. For instance, quarks (which make up the protons and neutrons inside atoms) come…
The color of a candidate’s skin failed to sway voters to depress the lever for either Obama or McCain in the 2008 election, immediate analyses of that contest seemed to suggest. Some pundits hailed it as the first postracial election. But a closer look after the election has revealed a much more nuanced picture of…
Stop wrangling over global warming and instead reduce fossil-fuel use for the sake of the global economy. That’s the message from two scientists, one from the University of Washington and one from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who say in a commentary in the journal Nature that the economic pain of a…
Charles Darwin recognized that natural selection can make eyes sharper, muscles stronger, and fur thicker. But evolution does more than just improve what’s already there. It also gives rise to entirely new things—like eyes and muscles and fur. To study how new things evolve, biologists usually have to rely on ancient clues left behind for…
George Soros believes it’s time to stave off disaster. As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history—a period of “evil.” Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America he predicts riots on the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically…
The Hadza, who live primitively in Tanzania, have social networks similar to modern ones. People prefer the company of those with attitudes similar to their own, a study finds.