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?
Despite what the movies tell us, any aliens that visit Earth probably won’t want to enslave or vaporize us, veteran E.T. hunter Jill Tarter says. Hostile aliens abound at the multiplex these days, terrorizing our planet in films such as “Battleship” and “Men in Black 3.” But science fiction is probably far from reality in…
The UN Secretary-General’s high-level panel on life after the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — the Post-2015 Development Agenda — held its second meeting in London at the beginning of November. It’s a reminder that the time has come for all of us to plan our futures in line with the proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),…
If our universe slammed into a neighboring one during a growth spurt in its first second, the collision would have left a mark. And Matthew Kleban thinks he sees it in the most detailed snapshot yet taken of the dawn of the universe. The satellite image, released by astronomers in March, confirmed what an earlier…
The first-ever mission dedicated to looking for dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious entities believed to explain the composition of the universe as we know it, will be launched in 2020, the European Space Agency said. The 800-million-euro ($1-billion) Euclid project will use a satellite employing a 1.2-metre (four-foot) diameter telescope and special cameras…
ESA’s Planck satellite has delivered its first all-sky image of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), bringing with it new challenges about our understanding of the origin and evolution of the cosmos. The image has provided the most precise picture of the early Universe so far. For the most part, the data agree extremely well with…
The carbon footprint of the science community is tiny by comparison with the rest of society. Yet changes will not happen if nobody takes the lead. And people who have benefited from a great education and earn by comparison a very good income should surely be well positioned to take on some ethical leadership. Perhaps…