Some years ago, with a sudden and drastic reduction on the number of honeybees, scientists realized that if these insects disappeared it would be the end of agriculture as we understand it, as they are the main drivers of agricultural pollination in the US . But would we be able to replace these pollinators with […]
Quantum computing is one of the most interesting fields of study nowadays, both from theoretical and pragmatic point of views. A universal quantum computer can potentially solve certain problems, as factorizing numbers, much faster and with fewer resources than a classical one . This developing technology is based on the use of quantum mechanics as […]
In the first article of this series, we saw what Middle-East Christian texts from the 7th century told about the Arabian invaders that abruptly took those wealthy territories that during the previous centuries had been disputed between the Romans and the Persians (first, Palestina, Syria and Mesopotamia; a little later Egypt and Persia itself). In […]
One of hottest topics in theoretical physics today is, of course, quantum gravity. The fact that, almost a hundred years after the born of the quantum theory, we still not have a functional theory that describes gravity at a microscopic level has become one of the most attractive problems for the majority of physicists (even […]
In our eyes, the cornea and crystalline lens project an image of the world onto the retina. There, this image is sampled by the rods and the cones —the light-sensitive cells of the vertebrate eye—, coded as a sequence of electrical signals and preprocessed by other neurons before being sent to the brain via the […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Competing gravity of galactic clouds probably caused band of gas A gravitational tug-of-war between the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud may be responsible for the huge ribbon of gas at the halo of the Milky Way. Astronomers in the U.S. and Germany measured how much oxygen and sulphur there is in the […]
On the eve of the First World War, British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey is reported to have said: ‘the lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time’. 2014 will mark the one-hundred-year anniversary of the war that provoked that ominous statement. The conflict that tore […]
To avoid any confusion regarding the object of study a disclaimer is in order. A statistical life is not a human life. The value of a human life is a concept that cannot be easily defined, if it can at all. I may value my life in such a way that I am willing to […]
One of the multiple tasks of quantum chemistry is the rationalization of the bonding between atoms to form molecules. In this vein, two main aspects are clearly distinguished: i) the binding energy, or the energy gained by the molecule when two atoms are bonded; and ii) the bond order (how many bonds are the responsible […]
Almost four years after being launched to space, the Herschel Space Observatory ran out of helium the past April 29. This implied losing the ability to stay as close as possible to absolute zero (at about 2K, indeed) which also meant the death of the spacecraft, since this mission was designed to observe the universe […]