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In some ways, the history of science is the history of a philosophical resistance to mythical explanations of reality. In the ancient world, when we asked “Where did the world come from?” we were told creation myths. In the modern world, we are instead told a convincing scientific story: Big Bang theory, first proposed in 1927 by the Belgian Roman Catholic priest Georges Lemaître. It is based on observations that galaxies appear to be flying apart from one another, suggesting that the universe is expanding. We trace this movement back in space and time to nearly the original point of...

Robot Couch Can Drive You to the Fridge and Back With a Raspberry Pi and USB gamepad controller letting you run riot on your sofa, this student project is couched in innovation. Sometimes, getting up off the couch to grab a drink is far too time consuming. What if you could drive the couch to the fridge instead? Well, your dreams of an automated couch have come true. Nine engineering students at the University of New South Wales in Australia have designed a robotic couch that can be controlled using a standard USB gamepad. Featuring a custom-built steel chassis with...

Superclusters – regions of space that are densely packed with galaxies – are the biggest structures in the Universe. But scientists have struggled to define exactly where one supercluster ends and another begins. Now, a team based in Hawaii has come up with a new technique that maps the Universe according to the flow of galaxies across space. Redrawing the boundaries of the cosmic map, they redefine our home supercluster and name it Laniakea, which means ‘immeasurable heaven’ in Hawaiian. Video Link

For decades we’ve been told to eat less cholesterol and saturated fat because they can cause or contribute to heart disease. Recently, however, these recommendations have been thrown out the window by some experts while the so-called real culprit—carbohydrates—are tossed to the lions. So, are cholesterol and saturated fat your friends while whole-grain bagels and organic quinoa are your enemies? Before you decide to make burgers and steaks a regular part of your diet or become distressed because you are a vegetarian or vegan, let’s take a closer look at what is being reported. A growing number of studies, including...

Explanation: Have you ever watched the Moon rise? The slow rise of a nearly full moon over a clear horizon can be an impressive sight. One impressive moonrise was imaged in early 2013 over Mount Victoria Lookout in Wellington, New Zealand. With detailed planning, an industrious astrophotographer placed a camera about two kilometers away and pointed it across the lookout to where the Moon would surely soon be making its nightly debut. The above single shot sequence is unedited and shown in real time -- it is not a time lapse. People on Mount Victoria Lookout can be seen in...

A World Health Organization official says an Ebola vaccine developed in Canada may be the first to be approved for use, possibly before the year is out. Marie-Paule Kieny says data from the first safety studies in humans of two experimental vaccines should be available by November. She says if they are deemed safe to use, it could open the door initially for use in health-care workers tending the sick. One of the experimental vaccines was developed at Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. The company which licensed that vaccine, NewLink Genetics, announced this week that it had received approval...

Dr Kurt Retherford of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio told Space.com that he thought this was unlikely. ‘The best explanation still is plumes for that [December 2013] dataset, no doubt about it,’ he said. Another suggestion is that the plumes may be too small to see; indeed, even Cassini has struggled to spot vapour associated with the plumes being expelled into space. The previous evidence for the jets had come in the form of water vapour spotted by Hubble above Europa. Although several explanations were offered, Nasa was pretty sure this vapour was due to erupting plumes on...

When NIF’s 192 high-energy lasers are fired at a tiny fuel pellet, the target implodes in an instant and creates a self-sustaining fusion reaction - in effect, a miniature hydrogen bomb. One problem is that the plastic “skin” of the pellet gets mixed with the fuel. “That’s like pouring water on a fire as you want to light it,” Dunne said. “The goal is to do all this with all absolutely clean implosions.” He admits that there is still much to be learnt in terms of finding the best materials for coating the fuel pellet, and invited proposals “from anywhere...

Despite being one of the poorest nations in the world, Afghanistan may be sitting on one of the richest troves of minerals in the world, valued at nearly $1 trillion, top science news website Live Science reports quoting US scientists. Afghanistan, a country nearly the size of Texas, is loaded with minerals deposited by the violent collision of the Indian subcontinent with Asia. The US Geological Survey (USGS) began inspecting what mineral resources Afghanistan had after US-led forces drove the Taliban from power in the country in 2004. As it turns out, the Afghanistan Geological Survey staff had kept Soviet...

Archaeologists say the discovery adds weight to the theory that Stonehenge was once a complete circle. Evidence that the outer stone circle at Stonehenge was once complete has been found, because a hosepipe used to water the site was not long enough. Parch marks in the grass, in an area that had not been watered, have revealed places where two "missing" huge sarsen stones may once have stood. The marks were spotted by an English Heritage steward who alerted archaeologists to their existence. Previous scientific techniques such as geophysics failed to find any evidence. Historians have long debated whether Stonehenge...

Explanation: Like a rainbow at night, a beautiful moonbow shines above the western horizon in this deserted beach scene from Molokai Island, Hawaii, USA, planet Earth. Captured last June 17 in early morning hours, the lights along the horizon are from Honolulu and cities on the island of Oahu some 30 miles away. So where was the Moon? A rainbow is produced by sunlight internally reflected in rain drops from the direction opposite the Sun back toward the observer. As the light passes from air to water and back to air again, longer wavelengths are refracted (bent) less than shorter...

Explanation: This rich starscape spans nearly 7 degrees on the sky, toward the Sagittarius spiral arm and the center of our Milky Way galaxy. A telescopic mosaic, it features well-known bright nebulae and star clusters cataloged by 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier. Still popular stops for skygazers M16, the Eagle (far right), and M17, the Swan (near center) nebulae are the brightest star-forming emission regions. With wingspans of 100 light-years or so, they shine with the telltale reddish glow of hydrogen atoms from over 5,000 light-years away. Colorful open star cluster M25 near the upper left edge of the...

Hidden among the four new images of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko released by ESA this week are a pair of dusty jets shooting from the nucleus of Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The photos were taken September 2, 2014 and posted as a mosaic of four separate images. I re-assembled the four, albeit imperfectly, and added some additional contrast to better show the dual geyser of ice crystals mixed with dust venting from the nucleus. ... Jets or sprays of vaporizing ice are what gives a comet its lively appearance. Dust released with water vapor is ultimately pushed back by the pressure of sunlight to...

People who have no cheap electricity burn wood or coal inside their homes to make dinner and stay warm. The smoke produces real pollution (as opposed to the fake kind which feeds plants). In India, some homes have pollution levels “three times higher than a typical London street”. Not surprisingly, living in smoke does not work out well for lungs and hearts. “Estimates suggest that household air pollution killed 3·5 to 4 million people in 2010. “We can argue about the numbers and whether they are exaggerated, but there’s no doubt that millions of people would lead better lives if...

Amazing what they can discover with data from the just last 130 years. Hey but it must be right. It’s bootstrapped!Finally, the study you’ve been waiting for. Now we can be absolutely certain — it’s practically proven beyond all doubt –  your SUV changes the climate.We just need to assume the climate models understand the climate and that there are no longer natural cycles at work AND that there are no effects from the sun from the solar wind, solar magnetic fields, or spectral changes. Easy. (Don’t look at the evidence,  the pause or all the model failures.)The new headline:99.999%...

A hoard of Roman treasure believed to have been hidden from Boudicca in the first century has been discovered by archaeologists in Colchester. The collection, including fine gold and silver jewellery, had been buried for safekeeping during the early stages of Boudicca's Revolt, Colchester Archaeological Trust said. It represents the first hoard of precious metals ever found in Colchester town centre and is thought to have belonged to a wealthy Roman woman, who stashed the treasure under her house when she heard the vengeful queen's armies were approaching. The archaeologists said the hoard was found under the floor of a...

The home-cooked meal has long been romanticized, from ’50s-era sitcoms to the work of star food writer Michael Pollan, who once wrote, “far from oppressing them, the work of cooking approached in the proper spirit offered a kind of fulfillment and deserved an intelligent woman’s attention.” In recent years, the home-cooked meal has increasingly been offered up as the solution to our country's burgeoning nutrition-related health problems of heart disease and diabetes. But while home-cooked meals are typically healthier than restaurant food, sociologists Sarah Bowen, Sinikka Elliott, and Joslyn Brenton from North Carolina State University argue that the stress that...

A 3,500-year-old inscription on a stone block found in Egypt is what archaeologists say the oldest weather report of the world. The inscription on a six-foot-tall calcite stone, called the Tempest Stela, describes rain, darkness and "the sky being in storm without cessation, louder than the cries of the masses," according to Nadine Moeller and Robert Ritner at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute who have translated the 40-line inscription. The stela's text also describes bodies floating down the Nile like "skiffs of papyrus." "This was clearly a major storm, and different from the kinds of heavy rains that Egypt...

According to a study published in Nature, oceanic mercury levels have tripled since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Far surpassing earlier estimates, data collected during research cruises from 2006-2011 in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans has revealed a 340% increase in surface-level mercury content. During the cruises, deep seawater samples (depths up to 5km) were compared to surface water samples. The analysis implicates the burning of fossil fuels as the primary culprit of this dramatic rise, with mining activities thought to have also contributed a significant amount.

Scientists have unearthed the skeleton of a previously unknown, massive dinosaur species that may be the largest land animal ever found.The specimen named Dreadnoughtus schrani is exceptionally complete, with about 70 percent of its bones recovered. Scientists believe the creature, which lived about 77 million years ago, measured 85 feet (26 meters) long and weighed about 65 tons, heavier than a Boeing 737.