What Should We Be Worried About?
We worry because we are built to anticipate the future. Nothing can stop us from worrying, but science can teach us how to worry better, and when to stop worrying.
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Greens to President Obama: Act Now on Climate
Green groups are amping up the pressure on President Barack Obama to make good on his promises to address climate change — even if Congress fails to act. By refocusing their efforts on the White House, environmentalists are bypassing the all-but-paralyzed legislative branch, appealing to Obama’s desire for a legacy and operating in an arena…
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The Biggest Thing in the Universe Is Really, Really Big
A newly discovered galactic structure is so large that it means one of our basic assumptions about the nature of the universe could be wrong.
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Pollution Highlights the Price China Is Paying for Rapid Development
Beijing has developed into an impressive modern city over the past two decades. But a tourist visiting the Chinese capital over the past four days would have difficulty seeing many of its ancient and modern landmarks because of the horrendous pollution hanging over the city. An editorial in The China Daily warned the country had…
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Claims of Fairness in Apes Have Critics Crying Foul
Chimpanzees often share and share alike when cooperating in pairs, suggesting that these apes come close to a human sense of fairness, a controversial new study finds. Like people, chimps tend to fork over half of a valuable windfall to a comrade in situations where the recipient can choose to accept the deal or turn…
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Mystery Cloud at Milky Way’s Center May Hold Clues to Star Birth
Near the crowded center of a mysteriously dense galactic cloud, where billowing clouds of gas and dust cloak a supermassive black hole three million times as massive as the sun — a black hole whose gravity is strong enough to grip stars that are whipping around it at thousands of kilometers per second — one…
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Climate Change: Generational Evil
In 2012, the dangers of human-caused climate disturbance became undeniable, making this the fundamental moral issue of our time.
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The Iron in Our Blood That Keeps and Kills Us
In this search for the origin of one of the world’s most common genetic diseases, emerging research in evolutionary medicine raises new questions about our history, development, and future as a species.
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Astronomers Find Largest Structure in the Universe
An international team of astronomers has found the largest known structure in the universe – a group of quasars four billion light years across. Quasars are the nuclei of extremely ancient galaxies that can flare up brightly, making them visible across huge distances, for comparatively brief period of between 10 and 100 million years. They…
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Alien Moons Could Be as Habitable as Exoplanets
Astronomers say they’re hot on the trail of real-life alien moons — which could also potentially be viable candidates for habitable worlds, researchers say. Astronomers have found roughly 850 known alien worlds. And as recently announced at the American Astronomical Society meeting, the Kepler spacecraft has picked up 2,740 candidate planets since its 2009 launch….