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Although astronomers only slowly came to realize dark matter’s importance in the universe, for me personally it happened in an instant. In my first project as a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1978, I measured the rotational velocities of star-forming giant molecular clouds in the outer part of the disk of our Milky Way galaxy. I worked out what was then the most accurate method to determine those velocities, and I sat down to plot out the results (by hand on graph paper) in the astronomy department lounge....

From Nature magazine Data gathered by NASA’s Cassini probe as it repeatedly swept past Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, offers the best evidence yet that the smog-swaddled satellite has a substantial ocean of water sloshing beneath a thick icy crust. During Titan’s 16-day orbit around Saturn, the distance between the moon and its planet ranges from slightly less than 1.19 million kilometres to almost 1.26 million km — a disparity that generates tides that flex the moon’s surface, says Luciano Iess, a planetary scientist at the Sapienza University of Rome....

By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - Would more residents of New Orleans have evacuated ahead of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 if it had been named Kurt? A study published on Monday suggests they would have, perhaps reducing Katrina’s death toll of more than 1,800. Because people unconsciously think a storm with a female name is less dangerous than one with a masculine name, those in its path are less likely to flee, and are therefore more vulnerable to harm....

In his book Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke tells a story of a peaceful alien invasion of Earth that comes at the expense of humanity’s unique identity and culture. A report to Congress from the Pentagon and various intelligence agencies about sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by military personnel is scheduled to be made public shortly. The report reportedly concludes that some of the UFOs are likely real objects whose nature cannot be assessed with any confidence....

Experts have long wondered why many people tan regularly despite the known risk of skin cancer. Past studies suggest that the motivation is not just vanity—some tanning buffs have symptoms of dependence and withdrawal. Now a study in Cell adds more evidence that tanning is addictive. It showed that mice become dependent on beta-endorphin, a druglike opioid molecule made by the skin under ultraviolet light. A team at Massachusetts General Hospital scrutinized the opioid system, the reward pathway hijacked by drugs such as heroin, because the researchers had earlier found that beta-endorphin and the skin pigment melanin originate from the same protein....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. The Battle of Hondschoote, fought on 6-8 September 1793, was a major turning point in the Flanders Campaign of 1792-1795 during the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802). An army of the First French Republic defeated an Anglo-Hanoverian force commanded by the Duke of York, thereby relieving the Siege of Dunkirk, and potentially saving the French Revolution (1789-1799) from early destruction....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Although Huldrych Zwingli (l. 1483-1531) began his Reformation efforts in Zürich in 1519, his first break with the Church came in 1522 when he defended a group of citizens who had broken the Lenten fast by eating sausages. The event, known as the Sausage Episode or Affair of the Sausage, marks the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland....

A new class of “climate fiction” has hit the publishing scene. But is it the real deal or just a flight of fancy? Climate Fiction: An Official Genre? There’s an unofficial new genre called climate fiction or more familiarly cli-fi. Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow writing in the magazineDissent: A Quarterly Journal of Politics and Culturethis summer proclaimed “Cli-Fi: Birth of a Genre.” By some accounts, theterm was coined by Dan Bloom in 2007“as a subgenre of science fiction....

Bright pink algae that light up the Arctic seafloor like Las Vegas neon are also guides to hundreds of years of climate history, a new study shows. From the medieval chill called the Little Ice Age to the onset of global warming in the 1800s, the coralline algae show how Arctic sea ice has responded to climate swings for the past 650 years. The findings were published today (Nov. 18) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

Nearly four years after Shinichi Mochizuki unveiled an imposing set of papers that could revolutionize the theory of numbers, other mathematicians have yet to understand his work or agree on its validity — although they have made modest progress. Some four dozen mathematicians converged last week for a rare opportunity to hear Mochizuki present his own work at a conference on his home turf, Kyoto University’s Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences (RIMS)....

A picture is worth 100,000 Swiss francs. Or at least that’s what a photo earns for the first-prize winner of the Prix Pictet, an annual photography award. The competition highlights exceptional work that addresses urgent social and environmental issues. This slide show presents selected works from Power, the fourth theme of the Prix Pictet in 2012 that is part of an annual cycle, which has also included Consumption, Growth, Earth and Water....

Since the beginning of recorded time, climate-forced migrations have reshaped civilization. Four thousand years ago a prolonged drought and the resulting famine in Canaan drove Jacob and his sons to Egypt, setting the stage for the famous exodus led by Moses. Three millennia later a prolonged dry period and lack of grazing lands helped to push Mongol armies out of Central Asia as far west as Europe, where many settled and intermarried....

Coal plants place a disproportionate burden on poor and largely minority communities, exposing residents to high levels of pollutants that affect public health, according to a new report led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The report ranks all 378 coal-fired power plants in the United States according to a plant’s impact on the health, economics and environment of nearby communities. People living near coal plants are disproportionately poor and minorities, the report found; the six million people living within three miles of those 378 plants have an average per capita income of $18,400 per year; 39 percent are people of color....

The items below are highlights from the newsletter, “Smart, useful, science stuff about COVID-19.” To receive newsletter issues daily in your inbox, sign-up here. On 6/10/20, The New York Times published a “coronavirus vaccine tracker,” by Jonathan Corum and Carl Zimmer. With prose and graphics, it describes the status of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates currently being developed and tested. The piece explains the timeline of the phases involved in developing a vaccine (or other therapy), i....

The Ebola outbreak continues to roil West Africa, with the World Health Organization announcing Thursday that the death toll has climbed to 729 in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. More than 1,300 people are infected. To help limit the spread of the disease the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the agency is now “surging” its response. Thursday afternoon the agency issued a new level 3 travel warning for the affected countries—asking Americans to halt nonessential travel to those locations and unveiling plans to send 50 additional CDC staff to the affected areas....

Think of the discipline of philosophy, and a certain sort of image springs to mind. Perhaps you visualize a person sitting comfortably in an armchair, lost in thought, perusing a few old books. Maybe you imagine a field that is scholarly, abstruse by nature and untethered to any grounding in real science. At any rate, you probably do not think of people going out and running experiments. Yet oddly enough, a cadre of young philosophers have begun doing just that....

The chance encounter of a Norwegian research vessel with the largest waves ever recorded amid floating packs of Arctic ice shows how such rollers could reroute shipping, damage oil platforms and threaten coastal communities with erosion. In a March report in Geophysical Research Letters scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) describe how large waves can penetrate more deeply into ice cover and break it up faster and more completely than anyone had suspected....

Many of the people I coach are in their 50s and 60s (and a few beyond that) so balance has become a bit of a focus for me lately. And just recently I received a question on Facebook about ways to improve balance and decided it was time to address this topic publicly. So, let’s take a look at how balance works, why we need it, and what we can do to maintain it....

Relatively soon, some prominent astrobiologists say, we will most likely have either found compelling evidence for extraterrestrial life or banished its possible existence to the ever shrinking edges of the cosmos beyond the rapidly expanding reach of our observations. Such answers could come by the end of the 2030s from any of a number of initiatives ardently seeking alien life. By then, samples from Mars will have arrived back on Earth, perhaps containing concrete proof that the Red Planet once harbored organisms or still does today....

Over-exploitation of species, deforestation and agricultural use have destroyed key animal habitats around the planet from 1970 to 2014. And now, the growing threat from human-caused climate change is increasing pressure on animals, according to the World Wildlife Fund’s 2018 Living Planet report. “Earth is losing biodiversity at a rate seen only during mass extinctions,” the report states. The biannual report looked at 4,000 species of amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles....