We love Mars. Nobody is sure about the exact reason, but we love it. Is it the red color that caught our attention long before the spacecrafts? Or is it the tall mountains and deep valleys they revealed? It is probably a mix of all of the above and much more. It is also the […]
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Ancient grooves may be evidence of dinosaur mating ritual Four sites found in Colorado exhibit fossilized grooves that may have been made by dinosaurs doing a bird-like mating dance more than 100 million years ago. Scientists say the gouges could have been made by theropods performing a mating ritual common to modern birds. The Washington […]
Phragmosis is a method by which an animal defends itself in its burrow by using its own body as a barrier. This term was coined by W.M. Wheeler in 1927 to describe a cryptic defensive technique employed by arthropods that use specially modified body structures to block nest entrances. A well example is the mygalomorph […]
Electrical energy is now the dominant form of energy consumption in industrialized countries and is an essential element in the operation of many of the devices we use every day. For decades, one of the most poorly understood yet most practical properties of a piece of solid matter was its ability, or lack of ability […]
Robots will be ubiquitous in the near future, few people would argue against that, with some authors even talking of a “ Cambrian Explosion of robotics ” . This bigger presence of robots in our daily life has accelerated the subfield of roboethics , which is trying to establish how we must design, use and […]
Bulldog ants ( Myrmecia pyriformis ) are the most dangerous ants on Earth. The name of these Australian native ants is due to the way they bite and hang off their victims using their mandibles: they sink their teeth and they keep gnawing at it. These mandibles were used by the Australian natives to temporarily […]
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Mystery of disappearing electrons may be solved A band of invisible meteor dust drifting to Earth may be behind the disappearance of electrons in the high atmosphere that’s had scientists baffled since the 1960s Electrons are produced high above Earth when the sun’s ultraviolet rays interact with atmospheric nitric oxide, but a big drop has […]
Unveiling the three-dimensional structure of proteins is one of the most useful strategies for understanding the molecular and cellular basis of human pathologies. Since proteins accomplish myriad cellular functions, but they are formed by combinations of only 20 different pieces, the way those pieces are coordinated is critical, and the tiniest difference can change forever […]
As you can imagine from the reading of the previous entries, it was by no means an easy task to transform skepticism into a weapon against religious belief. This does not entail that criticisms of religion tout court had failed to exist before, say, the late Modern Age. Not to mention again our adorable Greeks […]
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How information might be retrieved from a black hole There may be a way to retrieve a bit of information from inside a black hole. A team of physicists from the California Institute of Technology theorizes that the information can be gleaned by using Hawking radiation exiting the black hole and quantum teleportation. Science Crows […]