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Around 400,000 people marched through Manhattan yesterday to send a message to world leaders regarding the dire consequences of climate change, and the urgent, desperate necessity of enacting sweeping reforms to stop it. It appears at least 150,000 of those people tossed away their paper Starbucks cups... From the looks of it, much of what was heaved onto the ground by activists caught up in the fervor wasn't trash at all—a healthy amount of the detritus piled in the gutters was recyclable, indicating that attendees couldn't even be bothered to stuff their spent Gatorade bottles into their bags until they...

That’s the conclusion reached by one researcher from the University of North Carolina: black holes can’t exist in our Universe — not mathematically, anyway. “I’m still not over the shock,” said Laura Mersini-Houghton, associate physics professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. “We’ve been studying this problem for a more than 50 years and this solution gives us a lot to think about.” In a news article spotlighted by UNC the scenario suggested by Mersini-Houghton is briefly explained. Basically, when a massive star reaches the end of its life and collapses under its own gravity after blasting its outer layers into space —...

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt used an appearance on NPR on Monday to announce his company was cutting ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative organization composed of private companies and state legislators, over the group’s position on “climate change.” “Everyone understands climate change is occurring, and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place," Schmidt told NPR’s Diane Rehm. "And so we should not be aligned with such people – they're just, they're just literally lying.” As Schmidt might find out to his misfortune,...

No science data is missing after the Opportunity Mars rover had a brief “amnesia” event last week, NASA said in an update posted yesterday (Sept. 23). The hiccup occurred a few days after the rover had a reformat to correct ongoing memory problems that were stopping it from doing its mission. The latest incident happened when the rover “woke up” for a day of work. It was unable to mount its Flash memory, which can store information even when the rover is shut off for the night. An investigation is ongoing, NASA said, but the rover was performing normally as...

The do-or-die MOI breaking maneuver slowed MOM’s velocity by 1099 m/s (2457 mph) vs. an expected 1098.7 m/s – using the combined thrust of the 440 Newton Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) main engine and eight smaller 22 newton liquid fueled engines. The entire MOI maneuver took place fully autonomously under the spacecrafts preprogrammed sole control due to the long communications lag time and also during a partial communications blackout when the probe was traveling behind Mars and the signal was blocked. MOM’s goal is to study Mars surface features, morphology, mineralogy and the Martian atmosphere with five indigenous scientific instruments....

Canadian researchers: “Of all personality measures, sadism showed the most robust associations with trolling” ... Overall, strong positive associations emerged among online commenting frequency, trolling enjoyment, and troll identity, pointing to a common construct underlying the measures. Both studies revealed similar patterns of relations between trolling and the Dark Tetrad of personality: trolling correlated positively with sadism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, using both enjoyment ratings and identity scores. Of all personality measures, sadism showed the most robust associations with trolling and, importantly, the relationship was specific to trolling behavior. Enjoyment of other online activities, such as chatting and debating, was unrelated...

"Mother Nature ... is screaming at us about" climate change, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told the crowd at the opening event of Climate Week NYC 2014. While Kerry used a more measured tone than that which he attributed to Mother Nature, the apocalyptic nature of his warnings were in keeping with her purported sentiment. Using projections that appear hyperbolic, even compared to the worst case scenarios presented in the latest United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, Kerry said that "we’re on track to warm at at least 4 degrees over the course of the next...

Palaeontologists have discovered what they are calling the "Jimmy Durante" of dinosaurs, a type of hadrosaur with a distinctive nasal profile. Named Rhinorex condrupus, the fossil was found by researchers from North Carolina State University and Brigham Young University, and lived in what is now Utah approximately 75 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period. According to National Geographic, the date places the creature in the middle of a major dinosaur radiation, the process by which species adapt to new ecological niches. Rhinorex, which translates roughly into "King Nose", was a plant-eater and a close relative of other Cretaceous...

IT JUST gets bigger. The extent of the sea ice around Antarctica has hit a record high – for the third year running. Counter-intuitively, global warming is responsible. Since satellite records began in 1979, the winter maximum sea ice cover around Antarctica has been growing at 1.5 per cent per decade. This year has long been on track for a new annual record, with 150 daily records already set. The record was finally broken on 15 September and sea ice extent has increased since, according to data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center analysed by Australia's Bureau...

Thousands of people took part in the People’s Climate March in NYC on Sunday. Among them illegal aliens, people who want to “stop fuel” and some students earning extra credit from their public school teacher. “I’m actually here with ‘Culture Strike’ and we’re a national network of artists, musicians that focus on migrant justice,” Sonia Guiñansaca told Democracy Now! television. “A lot of undocumented artists were actually part of this. We’re designing the birds, the puppets—so were here loud, screaming out loud visually.” …

When traveling to far off lands, one packs carefully. What you carry must be comprehensive but not so much that it is a burden. And once you arrive, you must be prepared to do something extraordinary to make the long journey worthwhile. The previous Universe Today article “How do you land on a Comet?” described Philae’s landing technique on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. But what will the lander do once it arrives and gets settled in its new surroundings? As Henry David Thoreau said, “It is not worthwhile to go around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.” So it is...

Methodological Naturalism: A Rule That No One Needs or Obeys Paul Nelson September 22, 2014 11:47 AM | Permalink Recently, BioLogos posted the concluding Parts 3 and 4 of Robert Bishop's review of Darwin's Doubt. Although the discussion at BioLogos is winding down, Bishop's review raises issues calling for a reply, because the underlying premises of his position are shared by large numbers of science and philosophy faculty at both secular and religious universities. It is likely that, left unchallenged and unexamined, these faulty premises will continue to influence the debate.One issue in particular deserves extended comment: the standing of...

Full Title: Where did the green 'alien eggs' come from? Scientists baffled by UFOs (unidentified floating objects) that washed up on a Sydney beach Visitors from outer space or a natural phenomena? Surfers and early morning walkers were stunned to find thousands of 'alien eggs' on a Sydney beach this weekend. Locals in Dee Why, on the city's North Shore, reported seeing a large number of the strange objects which had washed ashore overnight. But rather than the green spheres being something from another planet, scientists explained they were a type of sponge-like seaweed that forms egg shapes possibly to...

Last week, Breitbart News revealed a secret video game journalist mailing list used by a clique of influential writers, editors, and bloggers, some of whom attempted to bully their colleagues with it in an attempt to shape the news agenda for political purposes. We can today reveal the complete list of journalists, some 150 key industry figures, on the list. Outlets with representation span the entire video games journalism universe and include Polygon, Ars Technica, Wired, Eurogamer, Destructoid, Kotaku, Joystiq, TechRadar, and many other well-known brands in games publishing. But they also include freelancers and staffers for publications as solidly...

A NASA spacecraft built to study the atmosphere of Mars like never before will arrive at the Red Planet tonight (Sept. 21) and you can watch it live online. After 10 months in deep-space, NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft is expected to enter orbit around Mars and begin a one-year mission studying the planet's upper atmosphere. The Mars arrival will cap a 442 million-mile (711 million kilometers) trek across the solar system. You can watch the MAVEN spacecraft arrive at Mars on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV, in a live webcast that runs from 9:30 p.m. to...

Village from the Roman period, dating from 3rd-4th century AD, has been discovered in Lipnica Dolna near Jasło (Subcarpathia). Among approx. one thousand archaeological objects there is a large pottery kiln, in which ceramics were fired. "The kiln is two meters in length and the same in width. It stands on a small tip in the Wisłoka valley. Its location shows that the wind blowing from the river was used to maintain the temperature during the firing cycle" - said Tomasz Leszczyński, archaeologist from the Subcarpathian Museum in Krosno. He added that "such kilns are extremely rare in the Carpathians"....

In the course of an educational dig in Gernsheim in the Hessian Ried, archaeologists from Frankfurt University have discovered a long lost Roman fort: A troop unit made up out of approximately 500 soldiers (known as a cohort) was stationed there between 70/80 and 110/120 AD. Over the past weeks, the archaeologists found two V-shaped ditches, typical of this type of fort, and the post holes of a wooden defensive tower as well as other evidence from the time after the fort was abandoned. An unusually large number of finds were made. This is because the Roman troops dismantled the...

The find is believed to date to the middle decades of the second century AD. It came from the grave of a child aged 2–3 years. The child had been buried in a nailed wooden coffin and also accompanied by his or her shoes, of which only the iron hobnails survived, and a pottery feeding cup or ‘tettine’. Only eight finds of this type are known from the Roman world, from Britain, Germany and the Low Countries. It is believed that cockerel figurines of this type, together with other richly-enamelled bronze vessels of high workmanship, were made in northern Britain...

Three Teutonic battle axes from the late Middle Ages have been found by engineers who remove World War II artillery shells left the forests in the Forest District Wipsowo (Warmia and Mazury). Historic weapons will be donated to the museum. Engineers stumbled upon the historic axes by chance, while searching the woods metal detectors. The weapons have been initially identified by an archaeologist as late-medieval Teutonic battle axes. Iron axes were close to each other, shallow underground, among the roots of trees. "It can be assumed that this is a deposit that someone left for better times. Perhaps the person...

More than 3,300 years ago, in a newly built city in Egypt, a woman with an incredibly elaborate hairstyle of lengthy hair extensions was laid to rest. She was not mummified, her body simply being wrapped in a mat. When archaeologists uncovered her remains they found she wore "a very complex coiffure with approximately 70 extensions fastened in different layers and heights on the head," writes Jolanda Bos, an archaeologist working on the Amarna Project, in an article recently published in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. Researchers don't know her name, age or occupation, but she is one of hundreds...