Uncategorized
- Earth
Water for the Rock
A long-popular theory about how Earth got wet—that the oceans are puddles left by an ancient rain of comets—doesn't seem to hold water, and new hypotheses suggest that the celestial pantry is now empty of a key ingredient in the recipe for Earth.
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19065
I was surprised to see no mention of small comets hitting Earth’s atmosphere over the eons as a source of surface water. This explanation, based on atmospheric observations, has gained growing acceptance over the past several years. Kenneth Saum Cotuit, Mass. Jonathan I. Lunine says that if local bodies provided water to Earth, then “Mars […]
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From the March 19, 1932, issue
EXPLOSIONS USED TO LOCATE OIL FIELDS IN SOUTHWEST A beautiful explosion, so large that the camera could only catch a part of it with sufficient clarity to detail its streaked and billowing effects, is reproduced on the front cover of this week’s Science News Letter. It is one of hundreds of such blasts that have […]
- Physics
Signatures of the Invisible
Contemporary artists worked with CERN particle physicists to create pieces of art that respond to (rather than simply illustrate) the preoccupations of modern physics. This quirky Web site, hosted by the London Institute, provides glimpses of the artworks that resulted from this collaboration. Go to: http://www.signatures.linst.ac.uk/
- Health & Medicine
Computer sharing tackles anthrax
A drug-discovery effort using more than a million personal computers worldwide has identified thousands of compounds that could form the basis of a cure for anthrax.
- Paleontology
Early hunters are guilty as charged
Scientists find that hunting is the likely cause of New Zealand's prehistoric bird extinctions rather than habitat destruction or pest introduction.
- Computing
Finding networks within networks
A new mathematical procedure, or algorithm, picks out those members within a larger network—for instance, related sites on the World Wide Web—that have especially close ties.
- Health & Medicine
Clot busters may put elderly people at risk
Very elderly people who get clot-dissolving drugs immediately after a heart attack are more likely to die during their hospital stay than similar-age patients who don't get them.
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When brains wring colors from words
Brain-scan data indicate that one type of synesthesia, in which people involuntarily see vivid colors while listening to spoken words, is more like a color hallucination than an attempt to imagine colors.
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Clones face uncertain future
Scientists have cloned a cat, but new studies suggest that cloned animals have shortened lifespans.
- Physics
Computer simulates full nuclear blast
In a classified nuclear-weapon experiment, the world's fastest computer simulated a thermonuclear blast in three dimensions.
- Math
Highway Relativity
There may be more to zipping along in the fast lane than meets the casual eye. Freeway drivers often sense that cars in an adjacent lane are moving faster than those in their own lane. That’s certainly true when the average speed of the cars in the next lane is significantly higher than that of […]
