When the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was reopened, not two months ago, the high-energy physics community was excited that the largest scientific experiment on the planet was operational. Then came the milestone that everyone wanted to see, namely the fact that the machine became the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, exceeding Fermilab's Tevatron. Now, scientists with the LHC's Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector have published the first results based on last December's proton collisions. The thing that stands out, the BBC News reports, is that the collisions yielded a lot more subatomic particles than theoret... [read more >>] Scientists at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden, have just recently finished conducting a new set of investigations about what it is precisely that makes us fear our cities, but only in certain times and places. What the research has essentially focused on is the correlation that forms between the buildings and streets of a city – its physical environment – and the social environment of people living within. The latter also includes people's perception of how the city is shared with others, AlphaGalileo reports. One of the most counterintuitive conclusions of the new investigation has been the fact that some teenage... [read more >>] Researchers have believed for a long time that species adapt, evolve, split, endure or disappear based on interactions with their ecosystems. In other words, the interaction between organisms and their environment, commonly known as ecology, shapes evolution. But many scientists have proposed over the years that the opposite also holds true, in the sense that the various species living in a certain ecosystem can influence that particular ecosystem as well. Now, a new research funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) lends further credence to that hypothesis. The data basically provides a new template for understanding the intrica... [read more >>] Scientists are excited at the possibility of having just discovered the oldest, most ancient tracks ever laid by a creature walking on Earth. The markings have now been estimated to be around 565 million years old, which makes them the oldest relics of ground-based locomotion ever. This means that the animal that made them moved on the seafloor in a way similar to the one employed today by sea anemones. They date from the Ediacaran Period, which is the last geological period of the Neoproterozoic Era, immediately before the start of the Cambrian Age, ScienceDaily reports. The fossilized tracks were discovered in the Newfoundland territori... [read more >>] During the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympic Games, to be held in Vancouver, Canada, InteraXon will be promoting its Bright Ideas project. This is the largest thought-controlled computing installation ever created, spanning more than 3,000 kilometers across the country. Light displays on Toronto’s CN Tower, Ottawa’s Parliament Buildings, and Niagara Falls will be entirely controlled by people’s thoughts, the company announces; and this is something that has never been attempted before. “The McGuinty Government is excited to have InteraXon participate at Ontario House during the 2010 Olympic Games. This unique attraction s... [read more >>] The future, or at least glimpses of it, is here. Well, at least in terms of military technology, which always seems to come first. According to the most recent projects set forth by various companies and research agencies, the combatants of tomorrow will be a totally different breed of fighting machines, endowed with artificial implants and prosthetics, robotic exoskeletons, and digital buddies that will be played by Artificial Intelligence (AI). These are the latest ideas to come out of the US Army's Natick Soldier Research Design and Engineering Center, in Massachusetts, LiveScience reports. One of the things everyone seems to agre... [read more >>] Researchers at the University of Hertfordshire led an international team of astronomers in making one of the most peculiar discoveries in a long time. The group managed to identify a sub-stellar body technically known as a brown dwarf right in our neighborhood, inside the Local Fluff. The space object may very well be the coolest of its kind ever discovered, the team believes, given that its surface temperature is just of 200 degrees Celsius. The finding was made using the Hawaii-based United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT), Space Fellowship reports. One of the weirdest things about this particular structure is the fact that it shines ... [read more >>] Chemists have recently made a discovery that could change the way chemical reactions are approached forever. They have determined that, while mixing a reaction has the ability to promote it, the opposite is also true. In other words, putting the right mix of elements together can trigger a stirring reaction inside the liquids, without external intervention from the researchers, or from specialized machines. A paper on this issue, appearing in the January 29 issue of the respected scientific journal Physical Review Letters, argues that certain chemical reactions can cause fluid flows, Wired reports. Anne De Wit, a scientist at the Universit... [read more >>] The US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced yesterday that scientists at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and the National Ignition Facility (NIF) managed to obtain the most powerful burst of laser in the world. The shot, which was delivered to a target in just a few billionths of a second, was about 30 times more powerful than any others obtained around the world, and was measured to have an energy level of 1 megajoule. Ulterior analysis of the target on which the laser pulse was fired demonstrated that it had achieved all of the conditions necessary for obtaining nuc... [read more >>] In spite of promising results during the last drive attempts, the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Spirit has now been transformed into a static scientific platform. Experts at NASA announce that they are dropping the rescue effort, which has been ongoing for the past ten months. Last May, the rover got trapped in a patch of loose Martian soil called Troy, and all drive attempts aimed at releasing it from its predicament have since failed. “Spirit is not dead; it has just entered another phase of its long life. We told the world last year that attempts to set the beloved robot free may not be successful. It looks like Spirit's curr... [read more >>] | 
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