Human-caused climate change, ocean acidification and species extinctions may eventually threaten the collapse of civilization, according to some scientists, while other people argue that for political or economic reasons we should allow industrial development to continue without restrictions. In a new paper, two…
A new analysis of geologic history may help solve the riddle of the “Cambrian explosion,” the rapid diversification of animal life in the fossil record 530 million years ago that has puzzled scientists since the time of Charles Darwin. A paper by Ian Dalziel of The University of Texas at Austin’s…
Small red stars, known by astronomers as “M-dwarfs”, are the most abundant type of star in the sky and are also the most long-lived of all stars. This means there are plenty nearby of M-dwarfs to search for possible habitable planets, and many current and planned exoplanet surveys emphasize the search for potential…
The evolution of worms, insects, vertebrates and other “bilateral” animals — those with distinct left and right sides — from less complex creatures like jellyfish and sea anemones with “radial” symmetry may have been facilitated by the emergence of a completely new “operating…
New findings by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, suggest that an evolutionary arms race between rival elements within the genomes of primates drove the evolution of complex regulatory networks that orchestrate the activity of genes in every cell of our bodies. The arms race is between mobile DNA…
Some 66 million years ago, a 10-km diameter chunk of rock hit the Yukatan peninsula near the site of the small town of Chicxulub with the force of 100 teratons of TNT. It left a crater more than 150 km across, and the resulting megatsunami, wildfires, global earthquakes and volcanism are widely accepted to have wiped…
Astronomers searching the atmospheres of alien worlds or exoplants for gases that might be produced by life can’t rely on the detection of just one type, such as oxygen, ozone, or methane, because in some cases these gases can be produced non-biologically, according to extensive simulations by researchers in the…
