To most of us, the practice of radioactive dating seems like a highly-technical, incomprehensible skill that nevertheless (we are told) yields absolute ages of things. We don’t know exactly how they arrive at the results, but are led to trust them because very smart people get their answers using hard science with extremely accurate equipment. […]
Physics Web has a summary of a report that appeared in Science Sept. 24.1 First results from an experiment on ESA’s Mars Express called Analyzer of Space Plasma and Energetic Atoms (ASPERA-3) are in. They show that the solar wind penetrates deep into Mars’ atmosphere, as far as 270 km above the Martian surface. Since […]
Rodney Stark (Baylor University) has written an article very critical of Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley and the other early promoters of evolution, and their modern counterparts, in American Enterprise Online. Stark claims that Darwin never proved his central thesis, the origin of species, and was well aware of the problems in his thesis even while […]
Tilt your head to the right while moving to the left. The neurons in your brain just solved Newton’s equations of motion, and performed complex vector calculus equations almost instantaneously. That’s what four neurologists Washington University of Medicine (St. Louis, MO) essentially claimed in Nature July 29,1 describing how your brain interprets the information coming […]
According to Charles Seife writing in Science,1 more cosmologists are taking parallel universes seriously. This is a consequence of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, one possible mathematical solution to the effects of quantum “weirdness.” If you think our headline is too harsh, read Seife’s opening in a Rod Serling voice while playing the […]
The New York Times and World Net Daily have stories about Earth’s magnetic field. The strength of the field has declined 10-15% over the past 150 years. If undergoing a reversal, which some physicists say is overdue, it could have profound effects on migratory animals like birds and turtles, and allow more dangerous radiation to […]
“Shocked” was how Carolyn Porco, lead Cassini imaging scientist, described her initial reaction to new pictures of Saturn’s rings. Precious images began to pour in early July 1 from science observations right after the previous night’s perfect orbit insertion maneuver (see 06/30/2004 headline). Even though the imaging team had been confident in the capabilities of […]
Hundreds of scientists and engineers are waiting with eager anticipation for SOI: Saturn Orbit Insertion, as the schoolbus-sized Cassini spacecraft races for its closest approach to the ringed planet tonight. Just before closest approach, Cassini will fire its main engine for 96 minutes to slow down the spacecraft and allow Saturn to capture it in […]
Physicists have found that a portion of the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen reaction thought to participate in fusion reactions inside stars runs two times slower than previously thought. The measurements were made in the Laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics (LUNA), a lab nearly a mile underground in Italy that offers more protection from cosmic rays. The ripple effect […]
Those cutaway views of the earth, with its core, mantle and crust, make nice diagrams in textbooks. But without a Hollywood-style probe and time machine to the center of the earth, how do we know what’s down there, and how it got that way? We know surprisingly little, admits David Stevenson (geologist, Caltech) writing in […]
A website featuring a new book by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, The Privileged Planet, has opened. The subtitle of the book is How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery. The authors take issue with pessimistic views, such as those of Steven Weinberg and Carl Sagan, that our planet is “pointless” or […]
One of the most formative ideas in Darwin’s intellectual journey was the concept of gradualism, the principle of “small agencies and their cumulative effects.” This idea became a dominant motif in his philosophy of life. Describing how the assumption of gradualism permeated his last book (on earthworms) shortly before his death, Janet Browne, in her […]
The so-called “Anthropic Principle” is the observation that the universe, whether by accident or design, appears to have been fine-tuned for our existence. Dating back decades, if not centuries, the idea has been alternately criticized and seriously pondered by the world’s greatest cosmologists. During the 1990s the idea was ridiculed to the point that, if […]