Snappy Science: Stretched Rubber Bands Are Loaded with Potential Energy!
2012-04-05 11:00:00
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What is Quantum Gravity [Video]
2012-04-05 09:05:00
The force of gravity is the lost sheep of physics, and physicists have struggled for the best part of a century to unite it with the rest of their flock of particles and forces. An unexpectedly fruitful approach has been to think of how gravity might operate if space were only two-dimensional . By simplifying the problem, they hope to get to the heart of what gravity is and then apply the lessons to our higher-dimensional space. [More]
Ship-Safe Seas: Could the Titanic Disaster Happen Again?
2012-04-05 07:00:00
After the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic, claiming more than 1,500 lives, the international community took swift action to prevent similar catastrophes. [More]
Food Poisoning's Lasting Legacy
2012-04-04 20:25:08
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What Thawed the Last Ice Age?
2012-04-04 15:01:00
Roughly 20,000 years ago the great ice sheets that buried much of Asia, Europe and North America stopped their creeping advance. Within a few hundred years sea levels in some places had risen by as much as 10 meters--more than if the ice sheet that still covers Greenland were to melt today. This freshwater flood filled the North Atlantic and also shut down the ocean currents that conveyed warmer water from equatorial regions northward. The equatorial heat warmed the precincts of Antarctica in the Southern Hemisphere instead, shrinking the fringing sea ice and changing the circumpolar winds. As a result--and for reasons that remain unexplained--the waters of the Southern Ocean may have begun to release carbon dioxide, enough to raise concentrations in the atmosphere by more than 100 parts per million over millennia--roughly equivalent to the rise in the last 200 years. That CO2 then warmed the globe , melting back the continental ice sheets and ushering in the current climate that enabled humanity to thrive. [More]
Shooting for the Moon [Slide Show]
2012-04-03 09:02:00
Right now, twenty-six groups of scientists, engineers and students from around the world are competing to be the first non-government team to get a rover on the moon by 2015. In this month's issue of Scientific American , Michael Belfiore explores what the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition means for the future of private spaceflight and tells the story of one of the most impressive teams - team Astrobotic. In this Web Exclusive, take a behind-the-scenes look at Astrobotic's preparations for a trip to the moon. [More]
Entrepreneurs Race to Get a Rover on the Moon and Win Million (preview)
2012-04-03 09:00:00
On a muddy, rubble-strewn field on the banks of the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh, a five-foot-tall pyramidal robot with twin camera eyes slowly rotates on four metal wheels, its electric motors emitting a low whine. In a nearby trailer, students from Carnegie Mellon University huddle around a laptop to watch the world through the robot’s eyes. In the low-resolution grayscale images on the laptop’s screen, the rutted landscape looks a lot like the moon, which is the robot’s ultimate destination. [More]
How Useful Is Whole Genome Sequencing to Predict Disease?
2012-04-02 17:30:00
A ,000 genome sequence is close to being available. What will your sequence tell you about your actual risk for certain diseases? [More]
Your Senses Possess Unusual Powers--a Special Report (preview)
2012-04-02 10:00:00
A submarine, scooting through the depths, shoots sound waves to probe the mountains and valleys of the ocean floor, allowing humans to explore that inhospitable realm. The Hubble Space Telescope takes snapshots of scenes billions of light-years away, revealing vistas vastly beyond the limits of the human eye. Yet we need not venture to treacherous places to enhance our perception of our home planet. A compass tunes hikers to the earth’s magnetic field, endowing them with knowledge of north and south as they wander through the woods. [More]
135 Years of Records Reveals Deep Ocean Warming
2012-04-01 18:02:08
Her Majesty's Ship Challenger set sail in 1872. Stripped of her guns and outfitted for science , her mission was to sail around the globe sampling as she went. [More]
Live Webcast: Xenophobia--Why Do We Fear Others?
2012-03-31 22:00:00
Join a panel of scientists, scholars and public intellectuals, including primatologist Frans de Waal, international economic advisor and Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs, experimental social psychologist Steven Neuberg, cognitive neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe, physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson and New York Times editorialist Charles Blow , as they discuss the biological and social dimensions of the timely issue of xenophobia, or the unreasonable fear of "others." [More]
New Images of Titanic Wreck Revealed
2012-03-30 17:35:00
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New Images of Titanic Wreck Revealed
2012-03-30 17:35:00
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Probability and the Birthday Paradox
2012-03-29 11:00:00
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Frequent Chocolate Eaters Have Lower BMI
2012-03-28 22:50:08
It's a dangerous time of year for a chocoholic--chocolate rabbits and eggs abound. But a weakness for the cocoa bean might not be a bad thing: those who indulge more frequently seem to actually have lower Body Mass Indexes, BMIs. [More]