What can science tell us about the Star of Bethlehem?

Dec 23, 2015 21:55 pm UTC| Science

During winter it can sometimes feel that the whole day passes in the blink of an eye and that evening darkness comes far too quickly. While more daylight would be a lovely thing, the early darkness has one big advantage:...

Plant viruses: from crop pathogens to key players in bio-nanotechnology

Dec 23, 2015 03:54 am UTC| Science

Plant viruses are sub-microscopic parasites that have been studied primarily because they cause devastating diseases in crop plants. But in recent years, scientists have discovered theyre not just bad news; they also form...

After eight years, NASA's Dawn probe brings dwarf planet Ceres into closest focus

Dec 23, 2015 01:23 am UTC| Science

More than a thousand times farther from Earth than the moon, farther even than the sun, an extraordinary extraterrestrial expedition is taking place. NASAs Dawn spacecraft is exploring dwarf planet Ceres, which orbits the...

A purported new mathematics proof is impenetrable – now what?

Dec 22, 2015 00:37 am UTC| Science

What happens when someone claims to have proved a famous conjecture? Well, it depends. When a paper is submitted, the journal editor will pass it off to a respected expert for examination. That referee will then scan the...

2015, the year that was: Science + Technology

Dec 21, 2015 00:15 am UTC| Technology Science

This year came and went almost as fast as NASAs New Horizons probe zipped past the distant dwarf planet, Pluto. Yet New Horizons managed to pack a lot into its flyby, revealing astounding images of Pluto that show it to be...

SpaceX Plans Launch Of Upgraded Falcon 9

Dec 17, 2015 05:12 am UTC| Technology Science

SpaceX scheduled a static fire test of the Falcon 9s first stage engines at Cape Canaveral, Florida on December 16. Florida Today reported that SpaceX lifted a Falcon 9 rocket vertical on its launch pad Wednesday, but as...

How a simple observation from the 1800s about patterns in big data sets can fight fraud

Dec 10, 2015 11:29 am UTC| Insights & Views Science

Benfords law was first mentioned by the American scientist Simon Newcomb in the 1880s, when he noticed that in books of tables of logarithms, the pages of numbers whose leading digit was 1 were more worn than the pages of...