Having a sense of purpose may add years to your life—and the benefit can be realized throughout adulthood. That’s the conclusion of a long-term study that tracked the physical and mental health of more than 6,100 Americans aged 20 to 75. Previous research has shown purposefulness to be one of the strongest predictors of longevity, but this is the first […]
Read more
Anatoli Brouchkov, a scientist whose curiosity and thirst for knowledge drove him to go beyond the standard protocol of his experimentation by injecting himself with an ancient “Eternal Life” bacteria. In 2009, a 3.5-million-year-old bacteria strain called Bacillus F was discovered deep in the permafrost of Siberia’s Sakha Republic. Scientists later found that mice and fruit flies exposed to the bacteria seemed to […]
Read more
The evidence for a new geological epoch which marks the impact of human activity on Earth is now overwhelming according to a recent paper by an international group of geo-scientists. The Anthropocene, which is argued to start in the mid-20th Century, is marked by the spread of materials such as aluminum, concrete, plastic, fly ash and fallout from nuclear testing […]
Read more
“Knowing what a chicken looks like and what all the chickens before it looked like doesn’t help us to understand the egg,” says Taras Gerya. The ETH Professor of Geophysics uses this metaphor to address plate tectonics and the early history of the Earth. The Earth’s lithosphere is divided into several plates that are in constant motion, and today’s geologists […]
Read more
Researchers have identified a new mechanism that drives the development of form and structure, through the observation of artificial materials that shape-shift through a wide variety of forms which are as complex as those seen in nature. It’s curious to observe such life-like behavior in a non-living thing – in many cases, artificial objects can look more ‘alive’ than living […]
Read more
Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have found that antibiotic resistance has risen to dangerous levels. If drastic action is not taken soon it will become a bigger killer than cancer by the year 2050. The report shows that at least 2 million people in the US are infected each year with germs that are resistant […]
Read more
Mapping the infant universe is no easy task. New data from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite is giving astronomers their most complete look yet at the very earliest moments of the universe. Planck, which measures microwave radiation, has created a heat map of the temperatures present in the universe a mere 370,000 years after the Big Bang. The data […]
Read more
For the first time, a mission designed to set its eyes on black holes and other objects far from our solar system has turned its gaze back closer to home, capturing images of our sun. NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has taken its first picture of the sun, producing the most sensitive solar portrait ever taken in high-energy […]
Read more