Imagine a sphere more than 2 million miles across spinning so fast that its surface is traveling at nearly the speed of light. Such an object exists: the supermassive black hole at the center of the spiral galaxy NGC 1365. Astronomers measured its astonishing spin-rate using data from the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and […]
The exceptionally simple theory of everything – known as E8 – proposed by a surfing physicist in 2007, does not hold water, says rock-climbing Emory mathematician Skip Garibaldi. Garibaldi did the math to disprove the theory in conjunction with physicist Jacques Distler, of the University of Texas, and their work appears in Communications in Mathematical […]
European researchers say that similarities in brain activity during lucid dreaming and psychosis indicate that previously discredited dream therapy could play a useful role in treating psychiatric conditions. Interestingly, the researchers back up their findings by theorizing about a potential evolutionary relationship between dreams and psychosis. Lucid dreaming is a hybrid state between sleeping and […]
A new University of Georgia study has found that despite overwhelming military superiority, the world’s most powerful nations failed to achieve their objectives in 39 percent of their military operations since World War II. Rather than military superiority, study author Patricia L. Sullivan says the most important factor influencing whether a military operation is successful […]
Modern humans spread out of Africa up to 50,000 years later than previously thought, say anthropologists. Three new studies in the current issue of Science examine precisely when it was that modern humans evolved in Africa, left Africa and colonized different areas of the Old World. Until now, theories held that modern humans spread from […]
Researchers believe that constructal theory – a physics principle that describes design in nature – could provide a new approach for forecasting environmental change. Research to date indicates that the theory can predict the global circulation of air that determines the boundaries between desert and tropical forests, as well as between temperate zones and the […]
While the risks associated with tobacco use are well known, several studies have shown that people with a history of cigarette smoking have lower rates of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. However, the explanations for nicotine’s neuroprotective effects continue to be argued. Recently, a team of neuroscientists at the University of South Florida […]
