Scientific American

Astronomers Detect Smallish Exoplanet's Infrared Glow

Mon, 14 May 2012 15:40:08 EST

Here’s a hot topic: astronomers have detected infrared radiation from a faraway planet not much bigger than our own.

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In Search of the Best (Energy) Ideas: A Q&A with ARPA-E's Arun Majumdar

Thu, 10 May 2012 20:01:00 EST

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA–E) works on a three-year cycle: Funded projects have three years to prove worthy--or not. Program directors who help fund projects such as Plants Engineered to Replace Petroleum ( PETRO ) or Batteries for Electrical Energy Storage in Transportation ( BEEST ) have three years to steer the research. And, after three years at the helm as the founding director of ARPA–E, mechanical engineer Arun Majumdar has announced that he will be stepping down in June.

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Ancient Time: Earliest Mayan Astronomical Calendar Unearthed in Guatemala Ruins

Thu, 10 May 2012 14:01:00 EST

An excavation of an archaeological site in Guatemala has uncovered Mayan astronomical records dating to the ninth century A.D. The tabulated numbers, which predate existing Mayan astronomical documents by several hundred years, chart the motion of the moon and also seem to relate to the orbits of Mars and Venus. (And good news: they do not predict the world will end this year --in fact, some of the numbers appear to refer to dates far in the future.)

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Climate Forecasting: A Break in the Clouds

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:15:00 EST

By Jeff Tollefson of Nature magazine

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Screening Test: Are al Qaeda's Airline Bombing Attempts Becoming More Sophisticated?

Wed, 09 May 2012 17:10:00 EST

The CIA, working with counterparts in the Middle East, earlier this week halted the latest al Qaeda terrorist plot to bomb aircraft bound for the U.S. The planned attack, which would have come from explosives worn under a passenger's clothing, is reminiscent of the so-called underwear bomb worn by an al Qaeda operative in the failed attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bring down a Detroit-bound passenger airliner on Christmas Day 2009 . The latest underwear bomb found through the covert CIA operation is thought to be the work of Ibrahim Hassan al Asiri , who designed the original device. [More]

Stonehenge Had Lecture Hall Acoustics

Thu, 03 May 2012 16:35:00 EST

The stone slabs of England's Stonehenge may have been more than just a spectacular sight to the ancient people who built the structure; they likely created an acoustic environment unlike anything they normally experienced, new research hints.

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Big Gulp: Flaring Galaxy Marks the Messy Demise of a Star in a Supermassive Black Hole

Wed, 02 May 2012 13:01:00 EST

Once in a while, a supermassive black hole gets a sumptuous treat . A passing star wanders too close and gets caught in the black hole's gravitational pull, like a fly trapped in a spider's web. The star then becomes an easy meal for the black hole, which tears its prey to bits and ingests a good portion of it.

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50 Years Ago: The First Gamma-Ray Satellite

Wed, 02 May 2012 08:00:00 EST

MAY 1962

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New "Beauty Baryon" Particle Discovered at Large Hadron Collider

Tue, 01 May 2012 10:15:00 EST

A never-before-seen subatomic particle has popped into existence inside the world's largest atom smasher, bringing physicists a step closer to unraveling the mystery of how matter is put together in the universe.

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The Trouble with Wi-Fi

Tue, 01 May 2012 08:00:00 EST

To most people, Wi-Fi is something of a miracle. Within 150 feet of some hidden base station, your laptop, tablet or phone can get online at cable-modem speeds--wirelessly.

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Spy-High: Amateur Astronomers Scour the Sky for Government Secrets

Tue, 01 May 2012 07:00:00 EST

Earlier this year Iran's defense minister put the world on notice: His nation had developed the ability to "easily" watch spacewalking astronauts from the ground. The announcement was largely ignored, in part because it made the minister sound like a James Bond villain. The boast was also a bit anticlimactic, given that even amateur astronomers are already recording in detail what happens in low Earth orbit. Both the technology involved and the techniques used to observe satellites and even the occasional astronaut perched outside the International Space Station (ISS) are improving, much to the presumed chagrin of governments looking to keep certain on orbital activity confidential. [More]

Mars and Mercury Star at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 12:00:00 EST

New Maps of Mercury Show Icy Looking Craters on the Solar System's Innermost Planet [More]

The Consolation of Philosophy

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 10:25:00 EST

Recently, as a result of my most recent book, A Universe from Nothing , I participated in a wide-ranging and in-depth interview for The Atlantic on questions ranging from the nature of nothing to the best way to encourage people to learn about the fascinating new results in cosmology. The interview was based on the transcript of a recorded conversation and was hard hitting (and, from my point of view, the interviewer was impressive in his depth), but my friend Dan Dennett recently wrote to me to say that it has been interpreted (probably because it included some verbal off-the-cuff remarks, rather than carefully crafted written responses) by a number of his colleagues and readers as implying a blanket condemnation of philosophy as a discipline, something I had not intended.

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Much Ado about Nothing

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 07:00:00 EST

Why is there something rather than nothing? This is one of those profound questions that is easy to ask but difficult to answer. For millennia humans simply said, “God did it”: a creator existed before the universe and brought it into existence out of nothing. But this just begs the question of what created God--and if God does not need a creator, logic dictates that neither does the universe. Science deals with natural (not supernatural) causes and, as such, has several ways of exploring where the “something” came from.

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Space Shuttle Swan Songs: Enterprise and Discovery Fly their Final Missions [Slide Show]

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 06:00:00 EST

New Yorkers who look up today can catch a glimpse of history. The Enterprise space shuttle will be flown along the Hudson River and around the metropolitan area on its way to John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, a stopover on its final journey to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in Manhattan. A modified Boeing 747 is ferrying the shuttle from its former home in Washington, D.C.

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Where It Rains, It Will Pour--Otherwise, Tough Luck

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:01:00 EST

Warmer air allows for more water vapor. So scientists have long predicted that global warming will result in a more intense water cycle --the process by which water evaporates from the oceans, travels through the atmosphere and then falls as rain. Now new measurements of the ocean's salinity prove that prediction --and suggest that global warming strengthens the water cycle even more than anticipated.

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Is Supersymmetry Dead?

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:00:00 EST

For decades now physicists have contemplated the idea of an entire shadow world of elementary particles, called supersymmetry. It would elegantly solve mysteries that the current Standard Model of particle physics leaves unexplained, such as what cosmic dark matter is. Now some are starting to wonder. The most powerful collider in history, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), has yet to see any new phenomena that would betray an unseen level of reality. Although the search has only just begun, it has made some theorists ask what physics might be like if supersymmetry is not true after all.

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Gamma-Ray Bursts Found Innocent in Ray Case

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:20:08 EST

Earth is under siege from outer space! In a way. We get peppered by speedy particles, called cosmic rays, all the time. Some come from the sun, some from supernovas and some via solar-style winds emanating from far-off massive stars. Anything that can accelerate a proton to nearly light speed does the trick.

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What Gives Solar Superstorms Their Power? [Video]

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:00:00 EST

In the past few months, you might recall warnings of incoming pieces of the sun. Called coronal mass ejections (CMEs), these energetic solar-storm particles can trigger amazing displays of auroras . But they can also wreak havoc on spacecraft, navigation systems and communications. In principle, a big enough CME could do so much damage to electrical infrastructure that power grids could be offline for months.

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Second Wind: Air-Breathing Lithium Batteries Promise Recharge-Free Long-Range Driving--If the Bugs Can Be Worked Out

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:30:00 EST

Researchers predict a new type of lithium battery under development could give an electric car enough juice to travel a whopping 800 kilometers before it needs to be plugged in again--about 10 times the energy that today's lithium ion batteries supply. It is a tantalizing prospect --a lighter, longer-lasting, air-breathing power source for the next generation of vehicles--if only someone could build a working model. Several roadblocks stand between these lithium–air batteries and the open road, however, primarily in finding electrodes and electrolytes that are stable enough for rechargeable battery chemistry. [More]