Sean Carroll: The multiverse might be impossible to test directly. Even if such a theory were true, the worry goes, how would we ever know? Is it scientific to even talk about it?
A peek at swirling matter around a giant black hole verifies that it is the source of a monstrous blast of energy thousands of light-years long, researchers say. Bursts of energy known as relativistic jets spew out matter at close to the speed of light. These jets can travel across an entire galaxy, suggesting they…
Newfound pieces of human skull from “the Cave of the Monkeys” in Laos are the earliest skeletal evidence yet that humans once had an ancient, rapid migration to Asia. Anatomically modern humans first arose about 200,000 years ago in Africa. When and how our lineage then dispersed out of Africa has long proven controversial. Archaeological…
An adenovirus isolated from chimpanzee feces is proving more effective than human adenoviruses as a vaccine vector for hepatitis C. Collecting stool samples from zoos and animal facilities, Alfredo Nicosia of Okairos in Rome, Italy and his team isolated and characterized almost 30 different chimp adenovirus serotypes from some 1,000 stool samples. They made safe…
Andrew Revkin reflects on the end of the “Rio+20” United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in his Dot Earth blog from the New York Times. Ilan Safit, a colleague of mine at Pace University who teaches philosophy and religious studies with a focus on the environment, sees the focus of Rio and related discussions as…
An ancient Roman lead scroll unearthed in England three years ago has turned out to be a curse intended to cause misfortune to more than a dozen people, according to new research. Found in East Farleigh, U.K., in the filling of a 3rd to 4th Century AD building that may have originally been a temple,…
Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), his party’s candidate in the Missouri Senate race to unseat Democrat Claire McCaskill, has quickly attempted to retract his comment that in cases of “legitimate rape,” women have biological defenses against pregnancy. “I misspoke,” he claimed in a carefully crafted statement. After all, cleaning up the mess after the candidate not…