Scientific American

#SciAmBlogs Tuesday - new astronauts, glass fossils, marine protected areas, emotional intelligence, and more.

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:32:00 EST

- Jag Bhalla - Game Theory And The Golden Punishment Rule [More]

New Astronauts Face Limited Opportunities for Spaceflight

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:04:00 EST

NASA announced on Monday its 2013 class of astronaut candidates, but the current state of the agency's human spaceflight program makes it hard to get excited about what lies ahead for these remarkable individuals.To mark the announcement, NASA hosted a Google Hangout on Air with several administrators and former astronauts. [More]

A Cosmic Map of the Exoplanets [Interactive]

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:00:00 EST

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Astronomers Search for Signs of Life in the Skies of Distant Exoplanets (preview)

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:55:00 EST

Nobody who was there at the time, from the most seasoned astrophysicist to the most inexperienced science reporter, is likely to forget a press co n ference at the American Astronomical Society's winter meeting in San Antonio, Texas, in January 1996. It was there that Geoffrey W. Marcy, an observer then at San Francisco State University, announced that he and his observing partner, R. Paul Butler, then at the University of California, Berkeley, had discovered the second and third planets ever found orbiting a sunlike star. The first such planet, 51 Pegasi b, had been announced by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the University of Geneva a few months earlier--but a single detection could have been a fluke or even a mistake. Now Marcy was able to say confidently that it had been neither. “Planets,” he told the crowd, “aren't rare after all.”

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The Global Citizens of Scientific American

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:00:00 EST

Fifteen languages, multiple platforms and one great institution: that is Scientific American , which celebrates its 168th year in August. I had another occasion to appreciate all of the above recently when we held our annual meeting of the international editions in New York City for the first time in many years. The multicultural mix, I have always thought, simply reflects the global collaborative nature of science itself.

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#SciAmBlogs Monday - health insurance, elephant shrews, Bloomsday, night noise, optogenetics, fathers, and more.

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 22:56:00 EST

See our new Image of the Week ! - Nortin M. Hadler and Janet Schwartz - The health insurance Shell Game [More]

Cosmic Cartography: Here Is Your (Local) Universe

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:48:00 EST

[caption id="attachment_4099" align="alignleft" width="252" caption="Our local cosmic terrain (Credit: Helene Courtois)"] [/caption] [More]

Good morning Gliese 526, the Earth says hello

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 09:22:00 EST

Over the years we've sent a lot of stuff into space. Most of that has been spacecraft sent out to explore the solar system -- the moon and sun, planets and asteroids. With Voyager poised on the edge of the sun's influence , we'll eventually be able to add a tiny pocket of interstellar space to that list. [More]

Readers Respond to "The Myth of Antioxidants"

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 10:00:00 EST

ANTIOXIDANTS AND HEALTH

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Bora's Picks (June 14th, 2013)

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 09:34:00 EST

A Sunken Egyptian City is Rediscovered, Stunning Researchers and Enthusiasts Alike by Khalil A. Cassimally : Named Thonis by the Egyptians who built it but known as Heracleion to the Greeks of the time, this great city was once a central part of ancient Egypt. Older than Alexandria, Thonis was probably founded during the eighth century BC. The city began on a downstream shore of the great Nile river where the land was fertile and freshwater was abundant. Thonis was strategically situated between the Mediterranean Sea and a great mostly landlocked lake, which also linked to the Nile river. The lake could (and indeed would) essentially be used as a huge parking space for ships.... [More]

#SciAmBlogs Thursday - leprosy, cicadas, oreogeny, DNA patents, Chladni figures, and more.

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 21:13:00 EST

Watch the latest Video of the Week ! - Naveena Sadasivam - Cornell student scrapes Indian exam results, exposes the system's flaws [More]

Hypervelocity Stars, and More - The Countdown, Episode 24

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 19:02:00 EST

[caption id="attachment_665" align="alignleft" width="325" caption="Credit: NASA/ESA/G. Bacon (STScI)"] [/caption] [More]

Galaxy of a Thousand Stars

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 14:22:08 EST

Our Milky Way galaxy is on the heavy side. We have hundreds of billions of stars, and an even more massive amount of dark matter.

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Chladni Figures

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 13:37:00 EST

Video of the Week #96, June 13th, 2013: [More]

#SciAmBlogs Monday - fractal bacteria, Kennedy's peace speech, eating dog food, one-eyed lizards, coffee against stress, PRISM, and more.

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 23:11:00 EST

Check out the new Image of the Week ! - Mark Hahnel - Research Management for Dummies [More]

Diary Of An Exhausted Scientist

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 09:05:00 EST

I swore I'd never do this, indeed, I'm on record i n these very pages as having disparaged the kind of thing I'm about to do.Oh well. All I can say is that normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. Which will be a good thing, because a huge number of interesting and intriguing discoveries and stories have emerged over the past couple weeks. From stronger support for the observation of ancient stream beds on Mars, to a remarkable opportunity for planets around Proxima Centauri , to 3 billion year old plankton , to evidence that hot Jupiters may not get consumed by their parent stars as often as we thought. [More]

June 8, 1783: How the "Laki-eruptions" changed History

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 14:04:00 EST

" The sun fades away, the land sinks into the sea, the bright stars disappear from the sky, [More]

#SciAmBlogs Friday - honeybees, happiness, mystery birds, summer reading, NSA, and more.

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 22:05:00 EST

- Matina Donaldson-Matasci - Honey bees and monoculture: nothing to dance about [More]

If the Universe Is Expanding, Why Are the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies on a Collision Course? [Video]

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 15:51:00 EST

Questions answered in this episode:

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#SciAmBlogs Wednesday - power plants, cooperation, zoo science, eating insects, non-extinct frog, coral reefs, and more.

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 22:13:00 EST

Check out the new Video of the Week ! - Mark Farmer - Power plants [More]