Posts Tagged ‘Discover’
Introducing silicene
Electronics engineers are constantly seeking the next great thing, the supermaterial that will allow for devices even smaller and faster than are possible with silicon chips. But research from this year has convinced some people that silicon’s successor may be none other [Read More]
Better boarding
Slow boarding annoyed Jason Steffen. but rather than complain about it, like most of us would, the Fermilab astrophysicist took to his computer and began writing algorithms to model potential solutions. In 2008 he announced a method that he claimed would cut boarding times [Read More]
Robots invent their own language
Australian scientists have invented a new breed of robots called Lingodroids, programmed to make, use, and share language. The bots can coin words to describe places they have been, places they want to go, and plans for getting there. Read more in this article from [Read More]
Planets with screwy orbits
Ever since astronomers started finding planets orbiting other stars, they have been learning just how rich and peculiar the cosmos can be. Recent observations. add yet another head-scratcher: giant gas planets that circle their stars on wildly tilted orbits or go around [Read More]
Million dollar math
My first feature was a piece about unsolved problems in mathematics, published in Discover in 2006. Read it here. [Read More]
Whatever Happened to… Smallpox?
Once the most feared disease on the planet, smallpox killed countless people in the course of human history. The first signs of smallpox are fever and aches. Then come the disfiguring pustules, often followed by death. But there hasn’t been a case in nearly 30 years. [Read More]
Whatever Happened To… Mind Control?
In the 1950s, visitors to a brothel atop San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill got more than just a tryst and a view of the bay. Clients were secretly dosed with LSD as CIA agents watched from behind a one-way mirror. Although it sounds like a bad late-night spy [Read More]
8 Ways Scientists Look at—But Don’t Yet See—Dark Matter
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The hunt for dark matter is on, and scientists are looking for the mysterious stuff on Earth and in space. I wrote about recent efforts to detect dark matter for the July-August 2009 issue of Discover magazine. Read the article here. [Read More]
A Shaking Star Soon Shares Its Secrets
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Just as earthquakes help scientists learn about the interior of our planet, the way a star’s surface oscillates yields clues to its internal structure and other key characteristics. Researchers with the Kepler Asteroseismic Investigation are putting that concept to work [Read More]
