2017 Nobel Science Prizes
It’s that time of year again – when the annual Nobel Prize winners are announced. Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel established the honors in 1895, with the first prizes awarded in 1901. The 2017 Nobel Prize science awards were announced on Monday, October 2nd through Wednesday, October 4th. First, the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute […]
Researchers Doubt the Existence of Dark Energy
According to NASA, the universe is composed of three things. About 4.6% of it is normal (visible) matter, 24% is dark matter and the remaining 71.4% is made up of dark energy. In other words, hypothetically speaking, around 95% of everything in the universe can’t even be seen. Now a Hungarian and American team of […]
Our Expanding Universe; LISA Pathfinder is a Success; Drugs in Waterways
How Fast is the Universe Expanding? The universe is a big place. And it’s getting even bigger, and at a faster rate than scientists had predicted. That’s according to a new study at Johns Hopkins University, led by Professor Adam Reiss. The study is based on an analysis of data gathered by the Hubble Space […]
2015 Nobel Science Prizes Announced
The 2015 Nobel Prizes for Physiology or Medicine, Physics, and Chemistry were announced this week in Sweden. On Monday (10/5/15) the Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet said this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine has been awarded to three scientists who developed unique therapies for fighting parasitic diseases that especially impact the world’s […]
Stephen Hawking: There May Be a Way Out of a Black Hole
Yesterday, renowned physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, speaking to attendees of a conference being held at Sweden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology, proposed a new idea that addresses a forty-year old cosmological mystery called the Black Hole Information Paradox. Simply put, the basis for the paradox is the conflict between quantum mechanics and the theory […]
Science Scanner: Mapping an Asteroid; Why the Universe Didn’t Collapse; Spicy Food Saves Lives
Scientists Create Geologic and Tectonic Map of Vesta the Asteroid A group of scientists used high-resolution images captured by NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft between 2011 and 2012 to create what they say is the first total geologic and tectonic map of the asteroid Vesta. Details on the work appear in the December edition of the journal […]
Science Scanner: All Systems ‘Go’ for Comet Touchdown, Cigarette Ash Removes Arsenic from Water, Is Earth’s Magnetic Field Ready to Flip?, Building the World’s Biggest Cosmic Ray Detector
Rosetta’s Philae Lander Given Green Light for Comet Touchdown in November The European Space Agency announced that all systems are ‘go’ for the Rosetta Mission to send its Philae lander to the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on November 12, 2014. This will the first-ever attempt of a soft touchdown landing on a comet. A month […]
Scientists Learn More about Mysterious 3rd Van Allen Belt
New research provides insight into the mysterious Van Allen radiation belts. There are normally two of these giant bands of high-energy radiation encircling the Earth. However, researchers discovered a third and previously unknown radiation ring that only lasted for about a month back in September 2012. Writing in a recent edition of Nature Physics, scientists from UCLA […]
Simple Theory May Explain Dark Matter
Scientists at Vanderbilt University believe dark matter, an invisible substance that makes up almost 85 percent of our universe, might be made out of particles that have an unusual, donut-shaped electromagnetic field called an anapole. A number of theories concerning dark matter have been developed over the years, but the Vanderbilt University scientists have come […]
Atoms Star in Smallest Movie Ever Made
The World’s Smallest Stop-action Movie (IBM) Bigger is often better in Hollywood, but IBM is drawing lots of attention for making the smallest movie ever. A Boy and His Atom is a stop-motion, animated movie made with thousands of precisely positioned atoms in nearly 250 motion picture frames. The folks at Guinness World Records® verified […]