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Light from Alien Super-Earth Seen for 1st Time
10 scientific facts about flavour
The real life X-Files: Meet the people who have been abducted by aliens
Is This Proof of Life on Mars?
How Do We Fall Asleep?
- Light from Alien Super-Earth S
This story was updated May 9 at 6:37 p.m. ET.Light from an alien "super-Earth" twice the size of our own Earth has been detected by a NASA space telescope for the first time in what astronomers are calling a historic achievement.NASA's infrared Spitzer Space Telescope spotted light from the alien planet 55 Cancri e, which orbits a star 41 light-years from Earth. A year on the extrasolar planet la...
- 10 scientific facts about flav
As a learned journal brings together research findings about how we taste, Clint Witchalls looks at what scientists have discovered so far.Taste is fairly well understood. It is detected by the tongue and is neatly categorised into sweet, bitter, sour, salty and umami. If food was only experienced as taste, chefs and restaurant critics would be out of a job. Luckily, taste is only one facet of the...
- The real life X-Files: Meet th
Meet the alien abductees - and the pictures they drew to prove they weren't imagining it all...It is a divisive subject - those who believe in alien visitors to our planet, and those who do not.But there are many people on this planet who earnestly claim they have been visited by aliens, and have been abducted and taken off this planet, even to alien homeworlds.While their accounts may vary, the ...
- Is This Proof of Life on Mars?
The Curiosity rover is currently on its way to Mars, scheduled to make a dramatic landing within Gale Crater in mid-August and begin its hunt for the geologic signatures of a watery, life-friendly past. Solid evidence that large volumes of water existed on Mars at some point would be a major step forward in the search for life on the Red Planet.But… has it already been found? Some scientist...
- How Do We Fall Asleep?
Falling asleep is a routine yet mystifying process. Like trying to see the 3D image in a Magic Eye poster, the more you focus on it, the less likely it is to happen. It shies away from scrutiny and is best approached with an air of detached disinterest; so, though most of us fall asleep every night, we can't say exactly how we do it.Even neuroscientists are still struggling to understand the mech...
This story was updated May 9 at 6:37 p.m. ET.Light from an alien "super-Earth" twice the size of our own Earth has been detected by a NASA space telescope for the first time in what astronomers are calling a historic achievement.NASA's infrared Spitzer Space Telescope spotted light from the alien planet 55 Cancri e, which orbits a star 41 light-years from Earth. A year on the extrasolar planet lasts just 18 hours.The planet 55 Cancri e was first discovered in 2004 and is not a habitable world. Instead, it is known as a super-Earth because of its size: The world is about twice the width of Ear Read more >>
As a learned journal brings together research findings about how we taste, Clint Witchalls looks at what scientists have discovered so far.Taste is fairly well understood. It is detected by the tongue and is neatly categorised into sweet, bitter, sour, salty and umami. If food was only experienced as taste, chefs and restaurant critics would be out of a job. Luckily, taste is only one facet of the complex thing we call flavour.Flavour is, of course, the stock in trade of chefs. For centuries, they have been combining flavours to create something that is more than the sum of its parts. From a s Read more >>
Meet the alien abductees - and the pictures they drew to prove they weren't imagining it all...It is a divisive subject - those who believe in alien visitors to our planet, and those who do not.But there are many people on this planet who earnestly claim they have been visited by aliens, and have been abducted and taken off this planet, even to alien homeworlds.While their accounts may vary, the one thing they share is a conviction in what they saw, what they experienced, and the impact it had on their lives.New York photographer Steven Hirsch, 63,has interviewed and photographed many abducte Read more >>
The Curiosity rover is currently on its way to Mars, scheduled to make a dramatic landing within Gale Crater in mid-August and begin its hunt for the geologic signatures of a watery, life-friendly past. Solid evidence that large volumes of water existed on Mars at some point would be a major step forward in the search for life on the Red Planet.But… has it already been found? Some scientists say yes.Researchers from universities in Los Angeles, California, Tempe, Arizona and Siena, Italy have published a paper in the International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences (IJASS) citin Read more >>
Falling asleep is a routine yet mystifying process. Like trying to see the 3D image in a Magic Eye poster, the more you focus on it, the less likely it is to happen. It shies away from scrutiny and is best approached with an air of detached disinterest; so, though most of us fall asleep every night, we can't say exactly how we do it.Even neuroscientists are still struggling to understand the mechanisms the brain uses to switch from a state of wakefulness to unconscious sleep, but research reveals that the transition is a lot more gradual and tumultuous than the flip of a light switch.Accordin Read more >>
Changes in the weather on the sun could leave Earth at the mercy of even more violent solar storms'Climate change' in the sun could leave Earth at the mercy of violent solar storms and cosmic ray blasts - and our aircraft may not be built to copeThe magnetic field around the sun is set to change in the next decades - cutting down the number of sunspots and explosive solar events.But the events that DO occur will be more damaging - and our aircraft and spacecraft may not be able to cope, an expert has warned.Changes in the Sun's magnetic field could also leave our planet more exposed to gala Read more >>
About 40 percent of red dwarf stars may have Earth-sized planets orbiting them that have the right conditions for life.Red dwarfs – which are smaller and cooler than our sun – are extremely common, making up 80 percent of stars in the galaxy. Their ubiquity suggests that there are tens of billions of possible places to look for life beyond Earth, with at least 100 such planets located nearby.The new estimate comes from a team of astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s HARPS planet-hunting telescope to look at a sample of 102 nearby red dwarfs over a six-year per Read more >>
Brussels Sprouts: Delicious or Disgusting? People who have a lot of papillae—the bumps on our tongue, most of which house our taste buds—often find flavors overwhelming. They’re “supertasters,” and as such they add cream to their coffee and order food mild instead of spicy. Subtasters, on the other hand, have low papillae density and prefer their chicken wings “atomic.”Individual taste, however, isn’t simply about papillae; it also has to do with our buds’ ability to detect different molecules. Although our brains can recognize the same fiv Read more >>
CHICAGO—A study published this week in the journal Pediatrics found that, within seconds of their birth, babies have the ability to sense whether their parents are losers. "From the moment they open their eyes, newborns can tell if their mother had no other options and was forced to settle for their father, or if their father is a sad sack who has no friends and gets drunk on a single glass of chardonnay," said researcher Dr. Stuart Lindstrom, explaining that despite their blurry vision, infants can still identify basic loser body types, and have specialized olfactory receptors allowing Read more >>
Researchers find a genetic link between the human brain and a sea-dwelling worm. The finding suggests that, to capture the entire evolutionary picture, biologists need to cast a wider net, to include animals that don't look alike.Biologists may need to rethink where to look for evolutionary changes responsible for the origin of vertebrates, including humans, as a result of research at Stanford University and the University of Chicago.Chris Lowe and Ari Pani, biologists at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station, discovered some of the essential genetic machinery previously thought exclusive to ver Read more >>
Catch yourself daydreaming while washing the dishes again? If this happens often you probably have a pretty capable working memory, new research suggests.This mind wandering, it seems, actually gives your working memory a workout. Working memory is the mental work space that allows the brain to juggle multiple thoughts simultaneously. The more working memory a person has, the more daydreaming they can do without forgetting the task at hand."Our results suggest that the sorts of planning that people do quite often in daily life — when they're on the bus, when they're cycling to work, wh Read more >>
A new survey of ancient lakebeds in the Nili Fossae region of Mars (above) revealed that only a third show evidence of deposits of mud and clay on the surface today. If life evolved on Mars, deposits of clay and sediment could contain fossil evidence of its existence as they have on Earth.A team of scientists at Brown University pored over surface images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Mars Odyssey Spacecraft, and the Mars Express spacecraft in search of lakes that once boasted water but found that only 79 of the beds contained deposits of minerals that hint at clays on the surface. Read more >>
In a blog post, Robert Krulwich of the public radio show Radiolab noted that there is no pink in the colors of the rainbow. Pink is actually a combination of red and violet, two colors, which, if you look at a rainbow, are on the opposite sides of the arc. Remember the old colors of the rainbow mnemonic ROYGBIV? The R (red) is as far as it can get from V (violet). That’s where the trouble lies. Pink can’t exist in nature without a little rainbow-bending help, which would allow the shades of red and violet to commingle. This is leading scientists to believe, as Krulwich puts it, tha Read more >>
A Japanese scientist said he has made violin strings out of spider silkand claims that — in the right hands — they produce a beautiful sound.Thousands of the tiny strands can be wound together to produce a strong but flexible string that is perfect for the instrument, saidShigeyoshi Osaki, professor of polymer chemistry at Nara Medical University.Osaki, who has been working with spider silk for 35 years, has previously suggested the material could be used for surgical sutures or for bullet proof vests, but his passion for the violin inspired him to create something with a musical t Read more >>
Google CEO Eric Schmidt attends a news conference during the mobile World Congress in Barcelona.BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt predicted Tuesday that rapid advances in technology will soon transform science fiction into reality – meaning people will have driverless cars, small robots at their command and the ability to experience being in another place without leaving home.Schmidt said the introduction of books available online, Internet translation of languages and voice recognition for computers all happened much faster than anyone envisioned and t Read more >>
We take clean drinking water for granted, but in the developing world it's a big and expensive problem. Now, scientists are turning to a plant known as the Miracle Tree to create a new way of purifying water.The Miracle Tree—or Moringa oleifera, if you're into Latin—has always had somewhat of a reputation, being grown in equatorial regions for food, traditional medicine and even biofuel. Some research in the past has shown that its seeds can be used to clean water, too—but one method was too expensive to use on a large scale, and another only left the water drinkable for a Read more >>
For years, British explorer William Lindesay's inquiries about a possible extension of the Great Wall in Mongolia turned up nothing, but the researcher recently had a breakthrough. Seeking insight from Professor Baasan Tudevin, a lauded but hard-to-find expert on the region, Lindesay posted an advertisement in a local newspaper. It was a long shot, but the two connected and the Mongolian geographer said he knew of several such structures in the Gobi desert, the Telegraph reports.Lindesay formed an expedition in August and with two Land Cruisers, 44 gallons of water, 12 gallons of extra gasoli Read more >>
Members of the upper classes are more likely to lie, cheat and even break the law than people from less privileged backgrounds, a study has found.In contrast, members of the "lower" classes appeared more likely to display the traditional attributes of a gentleman.It suggests that the traditional notion of the upper class “cad” or “bounder” could have a scientific basis.But psychologists at the University of California in Berkeley, who carried out the study, also suggested that the findings could help explain the origins of the banking crisis – with self-confident, Read more >>
"A supermassive black hole is a time machine. But of course, it's not exactly practical. It has advantages over wormholes in that it doesn't provoke paradoxes. Plus it won't destroy itself in a flash of feedback. But it's pretty dangerous. It's a long way away and it doesn't even take us very far into the future. Fortunately there is another way to travel in time. And this represents our last and best hope of building a real time machine."Stephen Hawking believes in time travel. But, time travel to the future. To Hawking, time flows like a river and it seems as if each of us is carried r Read more >>
If you generate a lot of excess body heat—and there's no shame in it—then it would make sense to put it to good use. A new wearable fabric called Power Felt could be the answer; it can generate electrical current from temperature differences.Developed by researchers at the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials at Wake Forest University, the new material is made up of carbon nanotubes locked up in flexible plastic fibers. Those fibers are woven together into a material that feels like felt, but reacts to temperature gradients to produce an electrical current. The resear Read more >>
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