Category: Science

As reported on The Verge. By Kwame Opam Researchers at Northwestern University have found evidence for a massive reservoir of water deep within the Earth’s mantle. The reservoir, which is said to be three times the volume of the oceans on the surface, is contained within highly-pressurized rock known as ringwoodite. The scientists hope that their findings, recently published in the journal Science, can shed light on where Earth’s oceans came from. THREE TIMES THE VOLUME OF THE…

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As reported on Engadget. BY STEVE DENT You might know where your forebears lived a few generations prior, but how about the exact village they came from — 1,000 years ago? Thanks to DNA sequencing, it’s now possible to find that out in many cases according to researchers from the University of Sheffield in the UK. The aptly-named GPS or Geographic Population Structure tool was modeled using more than 100,000 DNA signatures called AIMs (ancestry-informative markers). Since those are often typical…

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As reported on The Verge. By Russell Brandom On July 4th, 2012, the particle physics laboratory CERN announced the news. After more than 20 years of research and preparation, they’d finally found the Higgs boson, or a particle that looked an awful lot like it. It was touted as the last piece in the jigsaw puzzle of modern particle physics, justifying decades of theory and billions of dollars in experiments. The 17-mile, $4.4 billion Large Hadron…

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As reported on The Verge. By Russell Brandom Today, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory joined the cutting edge of laser research, receiving $45 million dollars to build a laser system of unprecedented power for a European Union project outside of Prague. The project, called ELI-Beamlines, is developing something called a “High repetition-rate Advanced Petawatt Laser System” (HAPLS), which employs short, frequent bursts of intensely high-powered lasers reaching power greater than 1,000,000,000,000,000 watts. If successful, it will be the…

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As reported on Engadget. BY CHRIS VELAZCO Most of us only pay attention to time when it’s causing headaches, but the same can’t be said of a team of researchers working out of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Led by National Institute of Standards and Technology fellow Jun Ye, they’ve crafted an atomic clock that can keep precise time for billions of years, a world record. This hefty new timekeeper can tick off the seconds…

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As reported on Wired. BY RHETT ALLAIN Check out this 736 horsepower Volkswagen Golf. Yes, most traditional muscle cars are rear-wheel drive instead of front-wheel drive. What is the difference? Of course there is an issue when the front wheels are used for both steering and power. But there is something else – traction. Fake Forces The best way to look at frictional forces on the tires for a car is to consider fake forces. Trust…

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