A palm-sized device inspired by a tiny purple beetle that feeds on palm leaves could one day enable humans to walk up walls in manner similar to comic book hero Spiderman.
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The last of Etna Week here on Eruptions has guest blogger Boris Behncke talking about the volcanic hazards posed by Mt. Etna.
Today marks the first installment of Big Think’s new series on business sustainability, sponsored by Logica. For the next thirteen Mondays (through June 8, 2010), we will release in-depth discussions […]
On Thursday, at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, I served as one of the panelists at the event “The Public Divide over Climate Change: Science, Skeptics and the […]
Tut tut Nicolas Chartier, producer of Oscar nominated film ‘Hurt Locker, whose scathing emails about other nominees have landed him in hot water and banned from the awards.
Right now our most advanced robots are not quite as smart as we would want them to be. One of the most popular—Honda’s humanoid robot, Asimo—is quite sophisticated but you won’t […]
Four men have agreed to be locked away in a steel container for 18 months in order to simulate a mission to Mars which will test the physical and mental stress of long spaceflight.
Scientists have found that a particular area of the North Atlantic Ocean attracts plastic debris and other trash, leaving the region comparable to the Pacific’s “great garbage patch”.
Falling levels of water vapor in the stratosphere may be slowing the effects of global warming as part of a natural earth cycle.
South of the Sundarbans mangrove forest, in the Bay of Bengal, lies one of those tiny flecks of land at the center of endless negotiation between two countries—a little patch […]
In TIME, science writer Maia Szalavitz dissects a recent rat study that was reported as if it showed that junk food is “as addictive” as crack. Some rats were assigned […]
“Who is Nick Clegg?” I hear you ask? Well, actually I don’t really hear many of you asking at all. And you may be forgiven. Until a week ago he […]
Three days ago, a Wake Forest professor of biology went to the US Senate, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the President’s Council on Environmental Quality, to give them all the […]
Rainstorms and mudslides have killed at least 38 people on the island of Madeira which is an autonomous region of Portugal though it sits over 500 miles from the mainland.
The second part of Eruptions readers’ recollections of the historic May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
Sabre rattling in the South Atlantic between Argentina and Britain over the Falkland Islands has a feel of déjà vu to it. As a young student, I took to the […]
Back in February, I traveled to Rome, Italy to present at a conference sponsored by Columbia University’s Earth Institute and the Adriano Olivetti Foundation. The focus was on climate change […]
Toads have “taken over” almost all of the modern world after an ancestral mutation allowed the creatures to thrive under drier conditions that their amphibian peers.
Part 2 of the Q&A with Dr. Boris Behncke of Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Catania.
THERE is an exhibit more ghastly and gruesome than the tatty stuffed Alsatian dog, awarded the Gustav Husak medal for sinking its teeth into a record number of attempted defectors […]
More than 20 per cent of America’s water treatment systems have violated provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act in the last five years, according to federal data.
The remnants of a vast sheet of ice lies hidden under Martian rubble, revealed by a new and wonderfully detailed radar map of Mars’ mid-latitudes.
Jennifer Bleyer reports on how the young, trendy and extremely broke are buying fresh organic produce using government-subsidized “food stamps.” Got a problem with that?
The fundamental contradictions of physics are present in even the most quotidian of objects. As the philosopher of science explains, some of quantum mechanics’ greatest mysteries are embodied in a […]
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When one studies the philosophical foundations of physics for a living, even the most trivial of everyday objects poses profound questions. For the Columbia University professor David Albert, who spent […]
If you have been reading the op-ed pages lately, you have begun to notice in the last week or so that a subtle change in their rhetoric is taking place. […]
The Russian army has been accused of dumping nuclear waste from a base in Latvia into the Baltic Sea in the early 1990s, according to a report on Swedish television.
Dolphins are living proof that you don’t need hands to create and use tools. Their sophisticated manipulations of water, air, and sea floor also demonstrate how culture spreads among their […]
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Scientists have discovered a remarkable species of octopus whose exceptional powers of camouflage mean it can successfully imitate flounder fish in the Atlantic Ocean.
Rebecca Goldstein grew up Orthodox Jewish and became a skeptical philosopher and novelist. How does that complex arc affect her writing?
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