YOU DECIDE: WHAT IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL EQUATION?
We asked a group of mathematicians and physicists to tell us their favourite equations. Now you get to decide which is the best.
By Melissa Hogenboom of the BBC
20 January 2016
Click here for the complete article and equation descriptions:
Meet your ancient relatives, trace the origins and evolution of our species, and explore what makes us human.
Human Evolution galleryThis new, permanent display marches through 7 million years of hominid history; highlights include a 3.5-million-year-old tooth from Tanzania, a Neandertal skull and the world’s oldest known wooden spear.
NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM IN LONDON
- See more at: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit/galleries-and-museum-map/human-evolution.html#sthash.kP0mCiWV.dpuf
Successful commissioning of GRAVITY at the VLTI
13 January 2016 at the European Southern Observatory
Zooming in on black holes is the main mission for the newly installed instrument GRAVITY at ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. During its first observations, GRAVITY successfully combined starlight using all four Auxiliary Telescopes. The large team of European astronomers and engineers, led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, who designed and built GRAVITY, are thrilled with the performance. During these initial tests, the instrument has already achieved a number of notable firsts. This is the most powerful VLT Interferometer instrument yet installed.
We don't know if Neanderthals count as humans, or if chimps do, because we can't agree on the defining features of a human
By Colin Barras of the BBC
11 January 2016
Some say it is culture that makes us human. Others opt for our morality, language, or even our sense of humour. But putting philosophy to one side, what literally makes us human?
Surprisingly, there is no official answer. Science has yet to agree on a formal description for our genus, Homo, or our species, sapiens.
The legendary physicist has helped explain the behaviour of black holes and even examined the origin of the universe
By Philip Ball of the BBC
7 January 2016
Stephen Hawking is probably the most famous genius of the modern age.
But what exactly is he famous for – apart from his astonishing resilience to an incapacitating disease, that instantly-recognizable retro-robotic voice, and his walk-on roles on The Simpsons and Star Trek?
Click here for the entire article concerning this amazing physicist:
This artist's rendering shows a galaxy called W2246-0526, the most luminous galaxy known. New research suggests there is turbulent gas across its entirety, the first example of its kind.
Credits: NRAO/AUI/NSF; Dana Berry / SkyWorks; ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
In a far-off galaxy, 12.4 billion light-years from Earth, a ravenous black hole is devouring galactic grub. Its feeding frenzy produces so much energy, it stirs up gas across its entire galaxy.
"It is like a pot of boiling water being heated up by a nuclear reactor in the center," said Tanio Diaz-Santos of the Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile, lead author of a new study about this galaxy.
This image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows Kupalo Crater, one of the youngest craters on Ceres. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Features on dwarf planet Ceres that piqued the interest of scientists throughout 2015 stand out in exquisite detail in the latest images from NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which recently reached its lowest-ever altitude at Ceres.
( Ceres is the largest asteroid, or perhaps dwarf planet, in the Asteroid Belt that is in between the planets Mars and Jupiter. The spacecraft Dawn arrived there last summer)
ELEMENTAL DIVERSITY Explosions of first-generation stars (one simulated here) produced elements heavier than helium and spread them throughout the cosmos. A newly discovered gas cloud may hold the signature of these ancient explosions. The densest gas in this explosion is shown in red.
KISSIMMEE, Fla. — A newly discovered gas cloud contains hydrogen and helium but virtually nothing else. The scarcity of heavier elements suggests that the cloud houses the remains of the universe’s first stars, John O’Meara reported January 8 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Scientists want to learn more about these ancient stars, which have never been observed directly, because they injected the first doses of carbon, oxygen and other crucial elements into the cosmos.
First-generation stars, forged from pristine hydrogen and helium gas produced just minutes after the Big Bang, burst onto the scene about 13.4 billion years ago. Astronomers don’t yet have the ability to see objects from that long ago.
O’Meara, an astronomer at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vt., and colleagues looked at the next best thing by probing a roughly 12-billion-year-old gas cloud. Analysis of the gas’s absorption of light from a distant galaxy revealed that the cloud contains about 0.04 percent the concentration of heavy elements as that in the sun. The mix of ingredients matches the expected yield from explosions of the universe’s earliest stars, O’Meara reported.
O’Meara says he expects astronomers to find other objects that are similarly scarce in heavy elements, especially once NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope launches in 2018. “This cloud is not a cosmic unicorn,” he says.
Humans have made an indelible mark on Planet Earth in a very short period of time
There is little doubt now that we have entered a new geological age, believes an international scientific panel.
Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent for BBC News
8 January 2016
(M101, NASA, ESA, CXC, SSC, and STScI)
We live on a spinning and orbiting world, but we don't usually think about our other, greater motions through the cosmos—maybe we should
By Caleb A. Scharf on December 29, 2015...Scientific American
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