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Here's Where Your Backyard Was 300 Million Years Ago

We may use terms like "grounded" and terra firma to mean stability and consistency but geology...

Convergent Evolution Cheat Sheet Now 120 Million Years Old

One tenet of natural selection is a random walk of genes but nature may be more predictable than...

Synchrotron Could Shed Light On Exotic Dark Photons

There are many hypothetical particles proposed to explain dark matter and one idea to explore how...

The Pain Scale Is Broken But This May Fix It

Chronic pain is reported by over 20 percent of the global population but there is no scientific...

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Biased? It May Just Be Your Low Self-Esteem

Biased? It May Just Be Your Low Self-Esteem

Feb 23 2011 | comment(s)

Think all Republicans are anti-science or religious people are stupid?  You may look for data to rationalize your bias but a new study in Psychological Science says it may just be your own low self-esteem; when people are feeling badly about themselves, they're more likely to show bias against people who are different from them. 

Jeffrey Sherman of the University of California, Davis, who wrote the study with Thomas Allen, used the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a task designed to assess people's automatic reactions to words and/or images, to investigate this claim.
Cassiopeia A - Superfluid Found In Neutron Star's Core

Cassiopeia A - Superfluid Found In Neutron Star's Core

Feb 23 2011 | comment(s)

Supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A) is the remains of a massive star 11,000 light years away that would have appeared to explode about 330 years ago as observed from Earth.

Neutron stars like Cas A contain the densest known matter that is directly observable. One teaspoon of neutron star material weighs six billion tons. The pressure in the star's core is so high that most of the charged particles, electrons and protons, merge resulting in a star composed mostly of uncharged particles called neutrons.
What Is A Geomagnetic Storm?

What Is A Geomagnetic Storm?

Feb 22 2011 | comment(s)

Concerns about geomagnetic storms are all the rage this week, so what are they? A geomagnetic storm is a disturbance in the magnetosphere due to near-Earth space weather that happens when the interplanetary magnetic field turns southward and remains that way.
Witwatersrand Basin - The World's Oldest Water?

Witwatersrand Basin - The World's Oldest Water?

Feb 20 2011 | comment(s)

A new study accepted for publication in Chemical Geology says deep saline groundwaters in South Africa's Witwatersrand Basin may have remained isolated for perhaps millions of years.

The Witwatersrand Basin covers approximately 400 kilometers, some of which is subcrop of the Witwatersrand Supergroup sedimentary and sub-ordinate volcanic sequences and is well-known for tourist expeditions to search for gold.

The researchers found the noble gas neon dissolved in water in three-kilometer deep crevices and the unusual neon profile, along with the high salinities and some other unique chemical signatures, is very different from anything seen in molten fluid and gases rising from beneath the Earth's crust.
Jericho - The World's First Skyscraper

Jericho - The World's First Skyscraper

Feb 17 2011 | comment(s)

If you've been to Bible study classes, you know the story of Jericho.   Actually, if you're an atheist you may know it even better, since on quizzes atheists seem to know The Bible better than many religious people.  In the story, Joshua, successor to Moses, led the Jews across the Jordan to what would be their land.   Jericho was clearly sitting on it so using trumpets for seven days and finally their voices they were able to take out the walls of the city and kill most everyone inside.

Wait until the Mythbusters try and tackle that one.
  
Evolution In Action: Hudson River Fish Mutate To Adapt To PCBs

Evolution In Action: Hudson River Fish Mutate To Adapt To PCBs

Feb 17 2011 | comment(s)

Researchers have discovered a genetic variant that allows a fish in the Hudson River to live in waters heavily polluted by polychlorinated biphenyls - PCBs. In their report,  they show that a population of Hudson River fish apparently evolved rapidly in response to the toxic chemicals, which were first introduced in 1929, and were banned fifty years later. PCBs were once used in hundreds of industrial and commercial applications, especially as electrical insulators.