Whether we are searching the cosmos or probing the subatomic realm, our most successful theories lead to the inescapable conclusion that our universe is just a speck in a vast sea of universes.
Fragments of a 1.5-million-year-old skull from a child recently found in Tanzania suggest early hominids weren’t just occasional carnivores but regular meat eaters, researchers say. The finding helps build the case that meat-eating helped the human lineage evolve large brains, scientists added. “I know this will sound awful to vegetarians, but meat made us human,”…
From an evolutionary standpoint, the key players in the mating game were males with poor fighting skills and females faithful to them.
Astronomers using U.S. and European telescopes say they’ve obtained a first tantalizing look at a crucial early stage in star formation. The new observations using radio and infrared telescopes will help scientists understand the early stages of a sequence of events through which a giant cloud of gas and dust collapses into dense cores that,…
Clemson University student Nathan Weaver set out to determine how to help turtles cross the road. He ended up getting a glimpse into the dark souls of some humans. Weaver put a realistic rubber turtle in the middle of a lane on a busy road near campus. Then he got out of the way and…
At a time when obesity has become epidemic in American society, Dartmouth scientists have found that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans may be able to predict weight gain. In a study published in The Journal of Neuroscience, the researchers demonstrated a connection between fMRI brain responses to appetite-driven cues and future behavior. “This…
Steven Pinker has written a long essay in The New Republic embracing scientism. That’s really too bad, because this way Pinker joins a disturbingly long list of scientists (and a few philosophers) who confuse a defense of good science with a knee-jerk reaction against sound criticism of science. [For a good, if partial, response to Pinker from the Left look here; for a far less convincing one, from the Right, look here.]