A new report based on input from the science community outlines the most pressing objectives over the next decade for studying the sun and the far-reaching effects of solar activity. The report, released by the National Research Council, identifies specific science goals and provides recommendations for how to maintain robust and effective programs despite budgetary…
Scientists measuring the sun were shocked to find it’s the most perfectly round natural object in the universe. Until now experts have always assumed that the sun bulged a bit around the middle – making it very slightly flying-saucer shaped. But the bulge is so small that if the sun was the size of a…
The common ancestor of sharks and humans — and all jawed animals with a backbone for that matter — possessed a sixth sense: the ability to detect electrical fields under water. The anatomical tools for this ability, called electroreceptors and electrosensory ampullary organs, arose from the same cell population in both cartilaginous fishes (such as…
An experiment five years ago suggested that babies are equipped with an innate moral compass, which drives them to choose good individuals over the bad in a wooden puppet show. But new research casts doubt on those findings, demonstrating that a baby’s apparent preference for what’s right might just reflect a fondness for bouncy things….
The newly discovered Phoenix cluster may be one of the most extreme objects ever observed, being among the most massive, luminous, and productive clusters in the universe. Located about 5.7 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Phoenix, it has a mass roughly 2,500 trillion times that of the sun. Distributed between the galaxies in…
Religiosity is on the decline in the U.S. and atheism is on the rise, according to a new worldwide poll. The poll, called “The Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism,” found that the number of Americans who say they are “religious” dropped from 73% in 2005 (the last time the poll was conducted) to 60%….
Humans could be the only animals that are sensitive to fairness, suggests a new Royal Society Biology Letters study. It’s not that other animals are unfair. They just don’t seem to care as much about fairness as we do, or so this and other research concludes. Ingrid Kaiser of the University of Heidelberg and colleagues…
In a major breakthrough, an international team of scientists has proven that addiction to morphine and heroin can be blocked, while at the same time increasing pain relief. The team from the University of Adelaide and University of Colorado has discovered the key mechanism in the body’s immune system that amplifies addiction to opioid drugs….
The primordial particles of matter that existed just after the big bang are now being re-created in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to advance understanding of the kind of matter that existed in the first seconds of the universe. Seconds after the big bang, quarks and gluons — basic building blocks of matter — were…
Archaeologists date relic, found in dig near Jerusalem, to the 12th century B.C.