Science in the media

Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the “new world” in 1492 marked the start of an epoch of mass death. An estimated 50 million inhabitants of North, Central, and South America died between that date and the mid 1600s, from warfare, enslavement and the rapid spread of European disease among the native populations — who had no…

The world’s largest science experiment, the Large Hadron Collider, has potentially delivered one of physics’ “Holy Grails” in the form of the Higgs boson. Much of the science came down to one number – 126, the Higgs boson’s mass as measured in gigaelectronvolts. But this three-digit number rested upon something very much larger and more…

Arsenic can poison people today through exposure to pesticides and pollution. But arsenic is also naturally present in the water and soil in some parts of the world. The Atacama Desert, sitting on top of arsenic-rich volcanic rock, is one of them. The concentration of arsenic in Atacama drinking water can be 20 times higher…

El telescopio espacial Hubble de la NASA ha encontrado la mejor evidencia hasta la fecha de la existencia de un océano de agua salada bajo la corteza de Ganímedes, la luna más grande de Júpiter. Este océano subterráneo podría tener más agua que toda la que hay en la superficie de la Tierra, según los…

In 1978, the mathematician John McKay noticed what seemed like an odd coincidence. He had been studying the different ways of representing the structure of a mysterious entity called the monster group, a gargantuan algebraic object that, mathematicians believed, captured a new kind of symmetry. Mathematicians weren’t sure that the monster group actually existed, but they…

The universe is the grandest merger story that there is. Complete with mysterious origins, forces of light and darkness, and chemistry complex enough to make the chemical conglomerate BASF blush, the trip from the first moments after the Big Bang to the formation of the first stars is a story of coming together at length…

Garuneko gune batzuk kitzikatuta, oroimenari iruzur egin daitekeela erakusten duten zenbait esperimentu argitaratu da azkenaldian. Bestak beste, saguak oroitzera behartu edo, alderantziz, oroitzapenak ezabatzea lortu dute ikertzaileek. Oraingoan, saguek leku jakin batzuk bereziki gustuko izatea lortu dute, lotan zeudela haien oroimena eta sari-sistema manipulatuta.

A small, newly discovered galaxy orbiting the Milky Way is emitting a surprising amount of electromagnetic radiation in the form of gamma rays, astronomers reported Tuesday. The finding may be the latest in a long string of cosmic false alarms, they said, or it might be that the mysterious dark matter that permeates the universe…

The newly discovered animal, dubbed Aegirocassis benmoulae, is an early member of the arthropod family tree, making it an ancient ancestor of cockroaches, butterflies and shrimp. It lived about 480 million years ago in a shallow sea that once covered part of the Sahara Desert.