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.
Our Milky Way galaxy’s supermassive black hole is apparently dining on all-you-can-eat asteroids, according to a new study. Dubbed Sagittarius A*, the monster black hole lies 26,000 light-years away in the galactic center. The black hole is surrounded by an accretion disk—a swirling ring of superheated gases—which spews radiation as matter is consumed. But astronomers…
The case of the missing quasar gas clouds has been solved by a worldwide research team led by Penn State astronomers. The discovery was announced in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, which describes 19 distant quasars whose giant clouds of gas seem to have disappeared in just a few years. Quasars are powered…
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…
Events high in the upper atmosphere can cause massive shifts in the behavior even of deep ocean currents, according to new research published in Nature Geoscience. The ocean is very important to the climate, acting as it does as a vast storage and transport mechanism for heat. But the oceans have tremendous mass compared even…
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.
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…