Science News

From crystal skulls claimed to be from the lost city of Atlantis (or aliens) to a runestone said to have been carved by Vikings and even a "missing link" hoax, here are six artifacts, widely believed to be forgeries, whi...

As with any particle accelerator designed to explore a new energy frontier, the operators at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have to take the machine up to its full operating potential step by step. Following the start o...

In July, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) reported the discovery of the pentaquark, a long-sought particle first predicted to exist in the 1960s as a consequence of the theory of elementary particles and the...

Two scientific papers inspired a media firestorm shortly after Katrina, polarizing popular opinion and, to some extent, scientists themselves, on whether global warming was in some way responsible for Katrina.

Stanford University researchers have developed a folding lens that turns a cell phone into a microscope. It's made with simple materials (paper and glass balls) for under a dollar. Watch a mite in action through: ://.fol...

Solar explosions can threaten power grids even in areas near the equator, places long thought safe from such disruptions from the sun, say researchers who studied a weird flow of electricity pulsing above the equatorial ...

A few weeks ago, we put up a "Fermi problem Friday" post about the odds of being struck by lightning. That post was met with some criticism in the comments section, so it's currently down while we revise it to reflect ou...

Therapies based on hormones that make us more trusting enhance our natural placebo effect - a finding that could alter the way clinical trials are conducted

An international team of scientists led by the University of Bayreuth and with participation of DESY has created the highest static pressure ever achieved in a lab: Using a special high pressure device, the researchers i...

Virtual reality (VR) is the new [old] buzzword [again], capturing the imagination of a new generation of early adopters, technologists and gamers. With its early roots in the 1950s simulation...

27 'named storms' formed over the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean in 2005, which spawned the most category 5 storms in a single season. NASA and NOAA tracked the paths of these killers. [On average there are only 10 st...

A team of physicists at the University of Toronto (U of T) have taken a step toward making the essential building block of quantum computers out of pure light. Their advance, described in a paper published this week in N...

The great physicist was not the first to equate forms of mass to energy, nor did he definitively prove the relationship --

Data from the GOES-5 satellite drove this simulation, illuminating the wind intensities and water vapor transport powering the massive category 5 storm, which ravaged New Orleans, Louisiana and adjoining areas in 2005.

A woman got a nasty bacterial infection in her knee, and her vigorous tooth-flossing regimen may be to blame, a new case report finds.

(Phys.org)--Decision-making--the ability to choose one path out of several options--is generally considered a cognitive ability possessed by biological systems, but not by physical objects. Now in a new study, researcher...

Compounds found flax and sesame seeds may help prevent or slow weight gain in women, a new study suggests.

A major advance in solution phase soft-x-ray spectroscopy has been achieved utilizing a new liquid flatjet system, paving the way for novel steady-state and time-resolved experiments.

Experimental quantum physics often resides in the coldest regimes found in the universe, where the lack of large thermal disturbances allows quantum effects to flourish. A key ingredient to these experiments is being abl...

Albert Einstein created his most famous theory amid personal strife, political tension and a scientific rivalry that almost cost him the glory of his discovery --

Research reported in Applied Physics Express (APEX) describes the development of 'vertically orientated' GaN-based transistors with blocking voltages exceeding 1kV. These findings are important for the application of nit...

New research on the papyrus' ink points to the possibility that the Gospel of Jesus's Wife is authentic, while newly obtained documents may shed light on the origins of the business-card-sized fragment.