Discover Magazine dark matter
Your hands are, roughly speaking, 360 million years old. Before then, they were fins, which your fishy ancestors used to swim through oceans and rivers. Once those fins sprouted digits, they could propel your salamander-like ancestors across dry land. Fast forward 300 million years, and your hands had become fine-tuned for manipulations: your lemur-like ancestors used them to grab leaves and open up fruits. Within the past few million years, your hominin ancestors had fairly human hands, which they used to fashion tools for digging up tubers, butchering carcasses, and laying the groundwork for our global dominance today. We know a fair amount about the transition from fins to hands thanks to the moderately mad obsession of paleontologists, who venture to inhospitable places around the Arctic where the best fossils from that period of our evolution are buried.
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Barn Cars A New York man retired. He wanted to use his retirement money wisely, and decided to buy a home and a few acres in Portugal. The modest farm house had been vacant for 15 years.
Giant Tropical Lake Found on Saturn Moon Titan
An oasis of liquid methane has unexpectedly been discovered amid the tropical dunes of Saturn's moon Titan, researchers say. This lake in the otherwise dry tropics of Titan hints that subterranean channels of liquid methane might feed it from below, scientists added. Titan has clouds, rain and lakes, like Earth, but these are composed of methane rather than water. However, methane lakes were seen only at Titan's poles until now — its tropics around the equator were apparently home to dune fields instead. Now near-infrared pictures of Titan from the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn collected since 2004 suggest a vast methane lake exists on the surface in the moon's tropics, one about 925 square miles (2,400 square kilometers) large and at least three feet (1 meter) deep. A number of models of methane's behavior on Titan convincingly show that lakes are not stable at the moon's tropical latitudes.
Crystal 'Flowers' Bloom in Harvard Nanotech Lab
Imagine peering into a microscope and finding yourself in a garden. That's the case at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, where researchers have found a way to shape microscopic crystals into complex and often beautiful structures. Inspired by coral reefs, seashells and other naturally occurring complex mineral structures, postdoctoral fellow Wim L. Noorduin and Harvard colleagues have been researching ways to manually recreate similar designs.
Science Magazine: Research, news and commentary
Special Section Breakthrough of the Year In this special issue, the Breakthrough of the Year, the nine runners up, and other features. Single-Cell Biology In this special issue, reviews on noisy gene expression, single-cell metabolomics, and genetic circuits.
Matrix mechanics
Matrix mechanics is a formulation of quantum mechanics created by Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and Pascual Jordan in 1925. Matrix mechanics was the first conceptually autonomous and logically consistent formulation of quantum mechanics. It extended the Bohr Model by describing how the quantum jumps occur. It did so by interpreting the physical properties of particles as matrices that evolve in time.
17 More Images You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped
This is the fourth installment of our series where we prove that sometimes, real life is stranger than Photoshop (see Part One, Part Two and Part Three). So enjoy our continuing chronicle of jaw-dropping pics that make you shout "FAKE!" the moment you see them, but in fact are not. Even if, in some cases, we really wish they were ...
Near-Space Tourism Balloon Runs Test Launch
A new tourist experience could be provided within five years by a huge balloon that offers stunning views of the horizon and the blackness of space. The designer tested the launch procedure last month, using a smaller version of the helium balloon and its passenger pod. The May 29 test was halted when a wind gust damaged the balloon's envelope. The video description of the launch test said a repeat test of the balloon, designed by the Spanish company Zero 2 Infinity, is "scheduled soon." The "bloon," as the company calls it, would carry a pressurized pod for two pilots and four passengers as high as 22 miles (36 kilometers) up.
Nanostructured nanowires appears to solve loss of superconductivity in very strong magnetic fields
Researchers have discovered a way to efficiently stabilize tiny magnetic vortices that interfere with superconductivity—a problem that has plagued scientists trying to engineer real-world applications for decades. The discovery could remove one of the most significant roadblocks to advances in superconductor technology. When magnetic fields reach a certain strength, they cause a superconductor to lose its superconductivity. But there is a type of superconductor—known as “Type II”—which is better at surviving in relatively high magnetic fields.
Electric Weather
The following excerpts come from a report that appeared in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) magazine, SPECTRUM, for April. The report demonstrates that when science has lost its way, engineers must use their intuition to make progress. Electric Rainmaking Technology Gets Mexico’s BlessingBut for now, doubters prevail north of the border.From at least the early 1940′s to the end of the 20th century, it always rained more in the state of Jalisco, in central Mexico, than in its neighbor Aguascalientes.
6 Insane Coincidences You Won't Believe Actually Happened
America's Freak Luck During the Battle of Midway The Battle of Midway may be remembered as one of the most spectacular naval battles in history and one of the huge turning points in the Pacific theater, but it started out as a pure clusterfuck for the Americans. Despite going into battle with most of Japan's game plan in their pocket thanks to American codebreakers/Bothan spies, the U.S. Navy had little to show for it in the early hours of June 4, 1942. Just about every aircraft that took on the Japanese that day was destroyed, and all without delivering any serious damage. In short, the Battle of Midway started off like the Battle of Endor, only with every fighter in the Rebel Fleet crashing into the Death Star's deflector shield.
Franken-Physics: Atoms Split in Two & Put Back Together
Physicists have just upped their ante: Not only have they split atoms but, even trickier, they've put them back together. Their secret? Quantum physics.
