(Credit: Lwp Kommunikáció/Flickr, CC BY-SA)
Soon after I enrolled as a graduate student at Cambridge University in 1964, I encountered a fellow student, two years ahead of me in his studies, who was unsteady on his feet and spoke with great difficulty. This was Stephen Hawking. He had recently been diagnosed with a degenerative disease, and it was thought that he might not survive long enough even to finish his PhD. But he lived to the age of 76, passing away on March 14, 2018.
It ...read more
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In late February, an invasion of warm, southern air sent temperatures surging above freezing across the Arctic and toward the North Pole. In the two weeks since then, three nor’easters have smacked New England and the surrounding areas.
As the Arctic warms, this trend has become common in recent winters, and it’s drawn new attention to links between the polar vortex — a constant mass of cold, dense air rotating over the north pole — and weather pa ...read more
An artist’s concept of a future orbital moon station. (Credit: Boeing)
The International Space Station is entering its twilight years. As such, NASA is making plans for the space station of the future — one that would orbit the moon.
This new lunar outpost will be smaller and more remote than the ISS — orbing beyond Earth’s protective magnetic field. And the station’s goal would be to serve as a transit hub for deep space missions and exploration past low-Earth or ...read more
Pterosaurs were more successful, evolutionarily speaking, than once believed, and were in their prime when done in by the same mass extinction that claimed the non-avian dinosaurs. (Credit Witton MP, Naish D (2008) A Reappraisal of Azhdarchid Pterosaur Functional Morphology and Paleoecology. PLoS ONE 3(5): e2271. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002271)
While dinosaurs have a healthy hold on our imagination, their sky-sailing relatives the pterosaurs don’t get nearly as much attention as they sh ...read more
Aurora over the Earth. JPL.
Before we get started, let’s have a cheer for Earth’s magnetic field! I would guess most of you never give it a second thought, unless you’re watching the Northern Lights or maybe using a compass. However, things would be very different on Earth if we didn’t have a magnetic field. But some people fear that the Earth’s magnetic field might be headed for a big change that could bring chaos to modern society, but are their fears well-founde ...read more
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Empathy is widely agreed upon to be one of the most human emotions that we possess. Seriously, no one’s ever complained about too much empathy.
It facilitates human relationships by allowing us to examine, understand and process the feelings and emotions of others. The absence of empathy is often linked to disruptive behavioral problems. Given its import in society, a group of scientists from the University of Cambridge and Institut Pasteur analyzed the results fro ...read more
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Every year or so, a fresh rash of concern about the Yellowstone supervolcano spreads across the internet. While the likelihood of an eruption there remains remote, if the caldera were to blow, it could be devastating. Previous eruptions there covered much of North America in choking ash, and likely caused sharp drops in temperature that would decimate crops today.
Living through a supervolcano eruption certainly qualifies as a doomsday scenario. But, humanity mi ...read more
