One of the most important features of thermodynamics is that it has improved human quality of life amazingly during the last centuries. Since in 1606, the Spanish inventor Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont patented the first steam engine a great effort has been done in developing new and better thermal machines. Internal combustion engines, heat […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Salamanders may be getting shorter due to climate change Appalachian salamanders have gotten shorter in the past 50 years, possibly adapting to warmer, drier weather conditions. Researchers compared specimens they collected with those collected by museums from the same areas since 1957. They found that each generation of salamanders in several species grew 1% smaller […]
Is there anyone that doesn’t know the sport of curling? Just in case: curling is a winter sport played indoors where two teams take turns sliding rocks on ice, trying to place them as close as possible to the button, a target area of four concentric rings placed about 30m away. One curler delivers the […]
Supernovae are one of the most fascinating events in stellar astrophysics. Most stars suffer explosions at some point of their last days but the most massive ones explode releasing incredible amounts of energy and rivaling in brightness with the rest of the galaxy they live in. What they leave behind is hydrogen enriched with materials […]
In a previous article I wrote about the high speed attacks of the mantis shrimps. However, my favourite feature of these crustaceans is their unique eyes. They have two apposition compound eyes, typical of many diurnal insects and crustaceans but unusual in how freely they can move on their stalks. The eye forms an image […]
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Iron dust helped plankton thrive during last ice age Plankton gorged on iron dust during the last ice age, causing them to thrive and absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide in the air, according to a study published in the journal Science. Some scientists argue that by seeding areas such as the Southern Ocean in […]
A uthor: Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo, Permanent Researcher, University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) The effort of mapping ignorance in biology is especially frustrating –or, if the mood and attitude of the scientist afford it, especially motivating– because solid, definite answers remain minimal compared to the amount of open issues and uncertainties that new discoveries in this […]
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Favorable weather gave rise to Genghis Khan Tree-ring scientists have linked favorable weather patterns with the rise of Genghis Khan and the Mongol empire, according a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, putting a new spin on the history of the Mongols. The steppes had an unusual 15-year period of rain […]
How are we like we are? What defines our mind, our character, and our behaviour? Men made themselves these questions in all ages of humanity. From the age of myths to the age of science the answers have been very many. We do not have an adequate answer yet, maybe never. However, the rise of […]
Last month, a lot of newspapers and websites have been promoting this article on Nature referring to a recent preprint uploaded by Stephen W. Hawking to the internet repository ArXiv. In this work, summarizing what he talked about in a conference given last August, the English physicist argue that, since event horizons, the definitory property […]