How easy is it to create life? It happened here at least once. Does that give scientists studying the creation of life from non-life (abiogenesis) much to work with?
Typically, when we talk about pollution, including carbon emissions, the numbers are talking about entire areas rather than specific locations. Researchers in the US have developed a new software system that is able to accurately map carbon emissions at the street level. The new system allows you to see each individual building, and the carbon…
Fifty-five million years ago, the world abruptly warmed by a scorching 5 degrees Celsius, the oceans turned acidic, and life ran a gantlet of extinction. Sound familiar? That was the closest nature ever came to foreshadowing the fossil-fuel-fed warming that is just getting underway now. But for 15 years, climate scientists have puzzled over how…
Researchers have produced the first comprehensive genetic map of the microbes that live in or on a healthy human body, laying the groundwork for possible new advances in research and in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. The accomplishment—the result of a five-year, $173 million initiative called the Human Microbiome Project funded by the National…
The common sundew drosera rotundifolia grows in rain-fed bogs across much of northern Europe. These habitats have few nutrients, so the plant needs to boost its nitrogen intake by trapping midges and other insects with its sticky leaves. But human activities involving burning fossil fuels for transport and industry have greatly increased levels of nitrogen…
While we have a supremely accurate theory of what happened after our universe started in its super-hot, super-dense childhood, we are still in the dark about its birth. But after more than a half century of work scientists are, perhaps, finally ready to go before and beyond the big bang. Author Metanexus Editors
There is a tendency for people to think science knows more than it knows. We hear phrases like “gaps in our knowledge” all the time, when in fact what we mainly have is knowledge in our gaps. The vastness of our scientific ignorance is especially evident when it comes to explaining how life arose on…