science

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New Theories on the Origin of Life

Today the New York Times brings us an interesting look at the origin of life. It tackles this central puzzle: "Which came first, the proteins of living cells or the genetic information that makes them? How could the metabolism of living things get started without an enclosing membrane to keep all the necessary chemicals together? But if life started inside a cell membrane, how did the necessary nutrients get in?" The article is worth a read if you've ever wondered how life could arise from simple... READ ON

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Why I Sneeze in Sunlight

Growing up in Florida, I had a weird allergy: the sun. Walking outside, coming from from a typically cool, dark indoor place, I'd invariably sneeze -- sometimes twice. It happened to my father too, causing a strange family multi-sneeze spectacle whenever we'd leave a movie. For me it was just one or two sneezes, then all better. What caused this? I always assumed there was something about bright light that disagreed with my bookish, "indoor kid" nature. Apparently I was right; today I learned that... READ ON

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Why We Should Explore the Sea

Remember Bob Ballard? He's the geophysicist who discovered the wrecks of the Titanic, Bismarck, Yorktown, and JFK's PT-109 (among other interesting deep-sea explorations). When I was a kid, I was way into Ballard's JASON Project, a distance-education program in which students participated in videoconferences with Ballard and his crew, learning about scientific exploration through the lens of Ballard's various undersea adventures. In 2008, Ballard gave an impassioned TED Talk about exploring the... READ ON

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Why Sisters Are Scientifically Better Than Brothers (and Other Important Discoveries)

If you're keeping tabs on the score between robots and humans, you've probably heard about the robot named Adam who made a scientific discovery back in April without any human assistance. Well, sort of. He made the discovery after some human scientists gave him a specific project to work on. And while the event was chalked up as a win in the artificial intelligence column, we're here to tell you that Adam's still got a lot of catching up to do before he's doing the work... READ ON

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Don't Eat the Marshmallow

In the late 1960s, researchers at Stanford devised what's now known as the "marshmallow test" to test participants' ability to defer gratification. The test went like this: put a marshmallow on the table in front of a four-year-old; tell the child that he or she can either eat the marshmallow now, or leave it uneaten for a while (15-20 minutes) and receive a second marshmallow at the end of the test; have the researcher leave the room for the prescribed period of time; if the child sits alone with the... READ ON

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Dan Ariely: We're Irrational Decision Makers

Dan Ariely is back with another killer TED Talk about his research! Back in March I wrote Dan Ariely: Why People Cheat, pointing to Ariely's TED Talk about his research on cheating. Well, now TED has released video from another Ariely talk, and it's equally awesome. In his lecture, Ariely describes how we make choices, and how those choices can be influenced by the design of the choice -- like whether a form's checkbox is opt-in or opt-out, or how the choice is presented visually. After seeing this... READ ON

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Levitating Frogs May Destroy Everything*

So let's say you've got a high-energy magnetic field. You could do a lot with it -- erase a hard drive, stick some fridge magnets to it, dramatically conclude the fifth season of Lost (ahem) -- but no, researchers in the Netherlands used their terrifying magnetic power to levitate a frog in mid-air. Here it is: A NewScientist article explains: The levitation trick works because giant magnetic fields slightly distort the orbits of electrons in the frog's atoms. The resulting electric current... READ ON

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"Happiness is Love," Researcher Concludes

George Vaillant has been overseeing a longitudinal study of men's lives for more than 40 years. The study focuses on the personal and professional lives of men selected in the late 1930's, and its participants include luminaries like John F. Kennedy and Ben Bradlee (editor of The Washington Post), along with 266 less well-known men. Vaillant has come to a conclusion after four decades of observing these men's lives: "Happiness is love. Full Stop." In an Atlantic article released today entitled What... READ ON

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The Last Mission To Save Hubble

Today, seven astronauts left Earth in one last attempt to save the Hubble Space Telescope. At nineteen years old, Hubble is aging and in need of major repairs. It's also dying a slow death -- at some point around 2015, Hubble's electrical system will fail for good, and then we'll finally have to let go. Today the New York Times has an article about the mission, and the various contingency plans that have been laid in case of (another) space shuttle disaster. The article explains the poignant reality of... READ ON

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A Physicist Explains the Iraq War

Sean Gourley is a physicist who wanted to know more about the Iraq war. He wanted to understand the war via the data -- data about attacks, deaths, types of weapons used, locations, and so on. So he and his team started using publicly available data to chart the war and its effects. His conclusions about the nature of war are powerful: there is order in war; there is mathematical predictability in the way fighting forces work. The patterns that underly the Iraq conflict look the same across many... READ ON