Friday May 24th 2013

Posts Tagged ‘Discover’

Introducing silicene

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

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

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

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

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?

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?

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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8 Ways Scientists Look at—But Don’t Yet See—Dark Matter

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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A Shaking Star Soon Shares Its Secrets

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]

Latest Topics

‘Print’ almost anything

‘Print’ almost anything

Imagine having a printer hooked up to your computer that could make anything. Tired of your toothbrush? No problem. [Read More]

Patents for software?

Patents for software?

  AT SOME point in their career every mathematician comes up against the question, is mathematics invented or [Read More]

Ahead of the wave

Ahead of the wave

  Bump a glass and any water inside might slop over the side. Splash in the bathtub and waves slosh. Toss a rock [Read More]

Foraging flights

Foraging flights

First, he tracked basking sharks—filterfeeding leviathans that look like supersized great whites—in the coastal [Read More]

Cutting Cancer’s Engine

Cutting Cancer’s Engine

Not every hypothesis in cancer research has the same staying power. Some emerge with fanfare and hype, only to fade [Read More]

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