This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists for their work on black holes. British cosmologist Roger Penrose will receive half of this year’s prize, with the remaining half split between German astrophysicist Reinhard Genzel and American astrophysicist Andrea Ghez. Ghez is only the fourth woman in history to receive the venerable […]
A bug trapped in a precious gem could offer new clues in the hunt for ancient life on Earth and Mars. The opal, pulled from rock in Indonesia and nicknamed “Beverly,” contains the shell of a tiny cicada nymph. In June in Scientific Reports, researchers explained how it likely formed. Other opal fossils have been […]
“I guess we’re in the middle of a sort of a major virology education.” Charles Rice, of the Rockefeller University in New York City. “I think that, you know, the field has definitely changed, you know, since the days when I was a graduate student. And I think one of the things that is very […]
Greenland is the biggest island in the world. And the ice sheet that sits atop it is massive. “The pile of ice is so thick it extends more than 10,000 feet above the ocean. And if all that ice were to melt and go into the ocean, global sea levels would rise by 24 feet […]
When Hurricane Sally blew through coastal Alabama last month, the owners of about 16,000 homes there had a reason to breathe a little easier. Their roofs were probably going to be OK. Alabama’s two Gulf Coast counties—Mobile and Baldwin—are the nation’s leading adopters of a nationally recognized building standard meant to keep storms from ripping […]
A new system called PiVR creates working artificial environments for small animals such as zebra fish larvae and fruit flies. Developers say the system’s affordability could help expand research into animal behavior. Related Video Support Science Journalism Discover new insights into neuroscience, human behavior and mental health with Scientific American Mind. Subscribe Now! Source link
I’ve never known an Earth that wasn’t on fire. I’m 23 years old, and I’m not alone. My entire generation has come of age in a world so defined by climate change and human destruction—by forests burning and glaciers melting, by extinguished species and rising seas—that it’s sometimes been hard to fathom what an even […]
The recent claim for a detection of the molecule phosphine in the Venusian midlatitude cloud layers has brought the idea of chemical biosignatures back to the forefront of attention in our efforts to find signs of life elsewhere in the universe. Phosphine, the argument goes, is not generally expected to be produced, or to survive […]
President Donald Trump tested positive for the novel coronavirus last week, just days after attending the first presidential debate with former vice president Joe Biden at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic’s Health Education Campus. While it is unclear if the president was infected at the time, people with the virus can be […]
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus, which causes severe liver disease in more than 70 million people worldwide. The prize was jointly awarded to Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice, both Americans, and British-born scientist Michael Houghton. Three hepatitis viruses are known […]