Why is ‘x’ the symbol for an unknown? In this short and funny talk, Terry Moore gives the surprising answer at TED Spectrum earlier in 2012.
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Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have found a single gene, called nemuri, that increases the need for sleep. The reserach team found a single gene in fruit flies that boosts sleep when insects are sic [...]
Jack Lieb went to Europe in 1943 with two movie cameras: He brought his 35mm black and white camera to film war coverage for Hearst’s News of the Day newsreels and his 16mm home movie camera to shoot color film to show to his family back home. Afte [...]
Nearly half of all insect species worldwide are in rapid decline and a third could disappear altogether, according to a study warning of dire consequences. Insects are the most abundant animals on planet Earth. If you were to put them all together in [...]
Climate change is melting ice in Antarctica faster than ever before – about six times more a year now than 40 years ago – leading to increasingly high sea levels worldwide, scientists warned. According to a new study which looked at details of ice an [...]
Mars is cold, mostly dry, and a place where liquid water appears only fleetingly. But water ice does exist on the Red Planet, and in the northern lowlands, Korolev crater holds a veritable reservoir nearly 1.8 (1.1 miles) thick in places. The stunnin [...]
After landing on the planet just a few weeks ago, NASA’s InSight lander has spent its days observing its new living space and sending back photos of the ground surrounding it. But has now deployed a science instrument onto the surface on Mars. On Dec [...]
NASA announced last week that the grizzled Voyager 2 probe crossed into interstellar space. The Voyager 2 probe, which left Earth in 1977, has become the second human-made object to leave our Solar System NASA announced last week. It was launched 16 [...]
New drugs, technology, and medical techniques promise a revolution in how we live, age and die. But these advances may come at a steep cost. In this program hosted by the World Science Festival, experts explore future challenges while debating the [...]
Archaeologists have discovered a Viking ship burial in Norway using ground-penetrating radar that suggests the 20-meter keel and many of its timbers remain well preserved just half a meter below the topsoil. The Viking longship was buried not far fro [...]
In a nearly 5,000-year-old tomb in Sweden, researchers have discovered the oldest-known strain of the notorious bacterium Yersinia pestis — the microbe responsible for humanity’s perhaps most-feared contagion: the plague. In a tomb in Sweden that is [...]
