Science (Page 221)

The evolution of the cosmos after the Big Bang NASA READER QUESTION: My understanding is that nothing comes from nothing. For something to exist, there must be material or a component available, and for them to be available, there must be something else available. Now my question: Where did theContinue Reading

Clovis spearheads. wikimedia, CC BY-SA For the first few million years of human evolution, technologies changed slowly. Some three million years ago, our ancestors were making chipped stone flakes and crude choppers. Two million years ago, hand-axes. A million years ago, primitive humans sometimes used fire, but with difficulty. Then,Continue Reading

Lukaszemenphoto/shutterstock We have always known that orangutans infants are very dependent on their mothers in their early years. But it turns out that orangutan mothers also change their own behaviour to help their children learn and become independent as quickly as possible. Primate culture has fascinated many of us whoContinue Reading

Alexey Seafarer/shutterstock Recently, scientists in Hornsund, Svalbard – a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic ocean – witnessed a polar bear pursuing a reindeer into the sea before killing it, dragging it ashore and eating it. The video that they captured was widely shared on news and social media platforms. Then,Continue Reading

James Webb Space Telescope mirrors undergoing cryogenic testing. Ball Aerospace/Shutterstock, CC BY-ND If everything goes according to plan on December 25, we will enter a new era of astronomy with the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It’s an event that has been anticipated for a decade –Continue Reading

As you can imagine, a human intelligence test doesn’t really cut it for birds. It isn’t that easy to assess how an animal perceives information from the environment, processes it and decides to act. But researchers have developed a range of clever experiments to find out more about their cognitiveContinue Reading

bang ridus/Shutterstock More than 40% of the world’s population play video games. But besides being entertaining, digital games are a product. The need to bring in money from players is integral to game design. A popular method of monetising games is through microtransactions. These are repeated, uncapped in-game purchases: forContinue Reading

Hubble: NASA, ESA, and Q.D. Wang (University of Massachusetts, Amherst); Spitzer: NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and S. Stolovy (Spitzer Science Center/Caltech) The forthcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope offers unprecedented new opportunities for astronomers. It’s also a timely opportunity to reflect on what previous generations of telescopes haveContinue Reading