Browsed by
Category: Science/mathematics

Burning coal may have caused Earth’s worst mass extinction

Burning coal may have caused Earth’s worst mass extinction

Comments 0 Comment

Dana Nuccitelli writes: Recently, geologist Dr Benjamin Burger identified a rock layer in Utah that he believed might have formed during the Permian and subsequent Triassic period that could shed light on the cause of the Great Dying [the Earth’s deadliest mass extinction 252 million years ago]. During the Permian, Earth’s continents were still combined as one Pangea, and modern day Utah was on the supercontinent’s west coast. Samples from the end-Permian have been collected from rock layers in Asia,…

Read More Read More

There’s no scientific basis for race — it’s a made-up label

There’s no scientific basis for race — it’s a made-up label

Comments 0 Comment

  Elizabeth Kolbert writes: In the first half of the 19th century, one of America’s most prominent scientists was a doctor named Samuel Morton. Morton lived in Philadelphia, and he collected skulls. He wasn’t choosy about his suppliers. He accepted skulls scavenged from battlefields and snatched from catacombs. One of his most famous craniums belonged to an Irishman who’d been sent as a convict to Tasmania (and ultimately hanged for killing and eating other convicts). With each skull Morton performed…

Read More Read More

Science shouldn’t treat the undetectable as taboo

Science shouldn’t treat the undetectable as taboo

Comments 0 Comment

Adam Becker writes: The Viennese physicist Wolfgang Pauli suffered from a guilty conscience. He’d solved one of the knottiest puzzles in nuclear physics, but at a cost. ‘I have done a terrible thing,’ he admitted to a friend in the winter of 1930. ‘I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected.’ Despite his pantomime of despair, Pauli’s letters reveal that he didn’t really think his new sub-atomic particle would stay unseen. He trusted that experimental equipment would eventually be…

Read More Read More

The ancient hunt in which the tracker’s skill united reason and imagination

The ancient hunt in which the tracker’s skill united reason and imagination

Comments 0 Comment

“The San people of the Kalahari desert are the last tribe on Earth to use what some believe to be the most ancient hunting technique of all: the persistence hunt; they run down their prey,” says David Attenborough:   “The hunter pays tribute to his quarry’s courage and strength. With ceremonial gestures that ensure that its spirit returns to the desert sands from which it came. While it was alive, he lived and breathed with it and felt its every…

Read More Read More

Stephen Hawking, in his own words

Stephen Hawking, in his own words

Comments 0 Comment

In memory of Stephen Hawking, who died on Wednesday at 76, the New York Times has gathered a selection of his quotes: “Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.” Don’t miss the latest posts at Attention to the Unseen: Sign…

Read More Read More