The arguments against an electric car are growing fewer. A vehicle in development by ECOmove – a consortium of Danish car builders – has unveiled a car that can travel 500 miles without refueling. Once a sticking point for electric vehicles, distance could be ticked off the list of grievances the driving populace has with…
Big scientific discoveries, such as the God particle, can have great Earthly potential that must be shared by the world’s poor. The announcement from CERN that we now have compelling evidence for the Higgs boson — the elementary particle that, according to theory, allows other particles to obtain mass — is widely acknowledged as a…
Some years ago a group of scientists produced an exercise in probability: the Drake equation. It looks at the percentage of galaxies with the right kinds of stars, the percentage of stars forming planets, the percentage of planets hospitable to life, to intelligence, and to intelligence adequate to communicate out into space. Some scientists then…
Americans’ confidence in organized religion is at its lowest in more than three decades, with just 44% having a lot of faith in the church, a new Gallup poll suggests. The results follow a long-term decline in Americans’ confidence in religion since the 1970s, when Americans ranked “the church or organized religion” higher than any…
Wild chimpanzees communicate using similar gestures to humans, according to a Stirling researcher. Anna Roberts said she had identified about 20 to 30 manual gestures used by chimps, up to a third of which were similar to those used by humans. The chimps’ gestures included beckoning to make someone approach or flailing their arms to…
Unsociable galaxies are unusual. Astronomers think that galaxies grow from scraggly clusters of stars to elegant spirals like the Milky Way by merging and pooling their resources. Loner galaxies like NGC 4178, which has spent most of the lifetime of the universe avoiding the company of other galaxies, are useful tools for disentangling how this…
Scientists are not robots recording events using mechanically objective methods. Like all human beings, scientists have biases. Indeed, the inherent bias in science has spurred debates over climate change, evolution, and other topics. Nonetheless, the reliability and validity of data used to draw conclusions are the linchpin for scientific progress. We can and must do…
From April 2013, science papers must be made free to access within six months of publication if they come from work paid for by one of the UK’s seven government-funded grant agencies, the research councils, which together spend about £2.8 billion each year on research. The policy, announced by the agencies’ umbrella body Research Councils…
The announcement that the “Higgs boson” had been discovered at the CERN laboratory in Geneva made news around the world. Why all the fuss? New discoveries of elementary particles have been made from time to time without attracting all this attention. It is often said that this particle provides the crucial clue to how all…
The Higgs boson is perhaps better known by its sexier nickname: the “God particle.” But in fact, many scientists, including the physicist for whom it is named, dislike the term. One thing is clear: The discovery that marked a new chapter in scientific knowledge also reignited debate over the universe’s origins — and the validity…