Category archives: Science

How science goes wrong Scientific research has changed the world. Now it needs to change itself The Economist Astronomers find a “tilted” solar system Scientists have discovered a “tilted” solar system, according to a report in Science. While looking at Kepler-56, a star about 2,800 light-years away, they were surprised to find that the plane […]

Cajal famously described the fly visual system as “stupendous, indeed disconcerting, and with no precedent in other animals”. By comparison, the vertebrate retina seemed “gross and deplorably simple”. Now we know that this simplicity is only apparent, but we can use the more clearly structured fly retina to help us study basic problems in visual […]

Todays story seems fairly simple: a magnetar has been seen spinning down. Impressive, isn’t it? You might be wondering what the hell is magnetar and why we should care about its spin. As it happens many times in science, we find nature behaving just the opposite to what we supposed it should. For scientists, this […]

Bikes are becoming a much more interesting mean of transport in urban areas due to the local policies to minimize traffic impact on the daily city life. City councils are building bike lanes, converting streets to mixed pedestrian-bike traffic, and similar solutions for encouraging the use of this clean mean of transport. However, this comes […]

Images catch molecules moving in glass The movement of molecules in the world’s thinnest glass has been captured in images and may help researchers better understand how the substance bends and breaks. Live Science Remains of water-filled asteroid found around white dwarf A white dwarf about 170 light-years from Earth holds evidence of a water-bearing […]

It is common to think that sci-fi writers are extremely creative and smart when they depict alien creatures with weird (and usually disgusting) ways of reproducing, generally using for this purpose the bodies of incautious and often naïve human characters. And they truly are that creative and imaginative, I’m not going to take that credit […]

Imagine you are invited to a demonstration at the local shopping center. You are shown a new product, a little ring made of a very special material that has been developed in a highly regarded research center. The scientists who are describing the ring provide all types of information and answer your questions convincingly and […]

With the delicate economical situation that many developed countries are experiencing in the last years, a significant number of questions and concerns have been risen about how to properly assign and distribute funding to scientific institutions and research group leaders. In particular, a relevant question for science funding could be how to optimize the scientific […]

Ocean health imperiled thrice over Climate change and increases in oxygen-free “dead zones” and acidification each pose health concerns for the world’s oceans, with immediate action required, says a report from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean. BBC Bulk of Earth’s xenon concealed in planet’s core Earth’s atmosphere appears to have only […]

We needed a Big Bang to create lithium, now it seems that it is much easier to destroy. This light element is the center piece of one of the most intriguing astronomical controversies. Can we use the lithium to look for planet-hosting stars? Why is it depleted in older stars? Anyway, Lithium seems to be […]