Priceless or worthless? That’s the question posed in a new report that lists the 100 most endangered animals, plants and fungi around the globe, as chosen by 8,000 experts for the Zoological Society of London and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The question was raised because the species closest extinction don’t have an…
Big History is an example of a new systems level in the complexification of intellectual history, in which new insights can emerge out of the attachment of separate visions.
In the past decade, astronomers have observed clay materials on Mars that seem to indicate large bodies of water once filled the Martian surface. But new research suggests that magma could form some of these slick deposits rapidly, and ancient Mars may not have been as wet as we thought. A region of French Polynesia…
There is enough energy available in winds to meet all of the world’s demand. Atmospheric turbines that convert steadier and faster high-altitude winds into energy could generate even more power than ground- and ocean-based units. New research from Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira examines the limits of the amount of power that could be harvested from winds,…
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is in part an embodiment of the idea that in the quantum world, the mere act of observing an event changes it. But the idea had never been put to the test, and a team writing in Physical Review Letters says “weak measurements” prove the rule was never quite right. That…
In 2004, a rare tropical fungus caused a string of respiratory failures and neural disorders along the Pacific Northwest coast, baffling the health community. That same year, Alaskan cruise ship passengers dining on local oysters fell sick with a gastric virus typically found in warm water estuaries. Now Texas, after an unusually wet spring and…
Astrophysicists have explored a discrepancy between the amount of lithium predicted by the standard models of elemental production during the Big Bang and the amount of lithium observed in the gas of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy near to our own. J. Christopher Howk, Nicolas Lehner and Grant Mathews of the Center for Astrophysics…
On November 8, 1800, fire ravaged the federal War Office, in Washington. The agency’s files went up in smoke, leaving a gaping hole in the nation’s historical record. “The most important window into the early republic had basically been boarded up,” says Christopher H. Hamner, a military historian at George Mason University. Not anymore. Through…
Almost 50 percent of global investors in a survey said government efforts to combat climate change will have little effect on corporate profits, while most say global warming is a danger to the planet. Actions to limit pollution will have “not much impact” on profitability, according to 49 percent of respondents in the Bloomberg Global…
Every day we observe systems thermalizing: Ice cubes in a pot of hot water will melt and will never remain stable. The molecules of the ice and the molecules of the water will reach thermal equilibrium, ending up at the same temperature. Well-ordered ice crystals turn into a disordered liquid. Recent experiments have shown that…