In 1989, the communist dictatorship oddly named Union of Soviet Socialist Republics reached the extent of a third giant hole in the Arctic Circle, Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3, where they'd been drilling for 19 years. It clocked in at nearly 8 miles deep.
Last month, an article that had caused something of a buzz in science circles since November was published in the journal Icarus. John Matese and Daniel Whitmire, physicists at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, wrote a paper(1) speculating about the existence of an unknown planet, a monstrous binary companion to our Sun bigger even than Jupiter.The problem, other than the usual hype by places like Huffington Post along with mainstream media outlets, was this planet would have to be in the Öpik-Oort Cloud , which is itself a hypothesis.
There are expensive gambles we can make and none are in the forefront of cultural thought more than penalizing current businesses and subsidizing 'green' ones to protect the environment. California, with a deficit that can basically never be repaid and $100 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, still subsidizes hundreds of millions in green tech companies with no benefit to-date.Pres. Obama thinks we should subsidize green companies also, to the tune of $2.3 billion in Recovery Act tax credits for green manufacturers.
Astrologers are feeling pretty good today. Because it's made up and not science, anything happening anywhere near a date they predict can be attribution, so talk of a 'supermoon' - a new or full moon at 90% of its closest perigee - followed by an earthquake in Japan makes them seem prescient.Well, are they? The supermoon which will occur March 19 will be at its closest to Earth in elliptical orbit (lunar perigee) and closer to Earth than it has been in 18 years. How close is that? Only about 2 degrees so unless astrologers have the kind of measurement instruments no one outside NASA has, they can't detect it. Which means it isn't causing huge waves or earthquakes.
Regulatory DNA changes have made a huge impact on the evolution of human-specific traits. A study in the latest issue of Nature covers not just the usual stuff, like what has been added in evolution to make us distinctly 'human', but rather what was lost.We're obviously different from animals and the researchers set out to find some molecular occurrences that are present in chimpanzees and other mammals but not in people - they found 583, which they call hCONDELs, 510 which were validated, mostly in nonfunctional DNA. One instance sure to catch attention is deletion of a penile spine enhancer from the human androgen receptor (AR) gene, a change correlated with a change in human anatomy - namely loss of penile spines.
It is impossible today to get a 'treaty' ratified that would cause America to obey CO2 limits set by any outside body, for a number of reasons. So Democrats in Congress have been trying to make CO2 the purview of the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA), which gives it sweeping authority to regulate and penalize businesses.Republicans, more skeptical than not on a CO2 basis for global warming, want that authority removed completely and have been trying to get the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011 passed, which keeps the EPA from being able to unilaterally regulate American industry. So Democrats held a hearing to try and slow it down.
You've seen it everywhere by now - Earth's sixth mass extinction: Is it almost here? and other articles discussing an article in Nature (471, 51–57 doi:10.1038/nature09678) claiming the end of the world is nigh. Hey, I like to live in important times. So do most people. And something so important it has only happened 5 times in 540 million years, well that is really special. But is it real?
If we're being honest in retrospect, the first decade of the 2000s was bad for science journalism. Too many journalists decided they wanted to be cheerleaders for science or, worse, had scientist envy and wanted to be included in cool discussions about the mysteries of the universe. Basically, journalists stopped asking the awkward questions of scientists that journalists in other fields know makes their careers (see: Dan Rather and Richard Nixon). Result: While the science audience is up and science knowledge has tripled since 1988, jobs in science journalism are down. Few people read them.
On the face of it, Al Gore conducting a global warming conference during a blizzard a few years ago looked bad. But maybe it was a teaching moment.The weather has always had swings and separating weather from climate is a key aspect in understanding why (a) pollution is bad and (b) we should have less of it, even if the weather is nice.
Okay, we all knew that cats manipulate women more than men but now science has confirmed it. An article in Behavioural Processes says cats gravitate toward women and it isn't just because they are easier to bilk food from. No, cats are even more devious than we previously believed.You probably want to slap people who tell you they have pets when you ask if they have children - and, I confess, I have gotten dirty looks when people have asked me if I have pets and I tell them I instead have children, which are 'just like' pets - but the social bond that crazy cat lady has with her cats actually is like what people have with their children, say the researchers.
Evolution has no moral compass. We all know that. And it has no guiding hand. For that reason, says Christian de Duve, professor emeritus at the Catholic University of Louvain and Nobel laureate (Medicine or Physiology 1974), we may be doomed.And to get his point across to all sides, he uses an Original Sin metaphor.
One of the subtleties of the human condition is that if you like or support someone or something, you can understand the nuances of what words mean differently than if you do not. If you are a fan of WikiLeaks, for example, the ends justify the means and how they obtain information is unimportant whereas if you are a fan of the climate researchers behind the so-called ClimateGate, the fact that the emails about them were stolen is most important. And if those researchers are cleared of scientific misconduct you say they are cleared.
Science and religion have always been in something of a conflict. Science seeks to explain the world according to natural laws while religion leaves larger questions as articles of faith. There is some overlap - 40% of AAAS member scientists in their recent survey are also religious - but AAAS covers a broad cross-section of scientists whereas biology is ground zero for a conflict with religion over man as we exist today and how we came to be. So there is less overlap in the life sciences but there have been ongoing attempts to reconcile the two camps, usually with scientists conceding that whatever 'sparked' life has no basis in current data so it is left to philosophy or religion as well.
