New observations from the Herschel Space Observatory show a bizarre, twisted ring of dense gas at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Only a few portions of the ring, which stretches across more than 600 light-years, were known before. Herschel's view reveals the entire ring for the first time, ...

Some of the human X chromosome originates from Neanderthals and is found exclusively in people outside Africa, according to an international team of researchers led by Damian Labuda of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center. The research was published in the ...

Solar panels give you clean energy, yes, but it turns out that's not all. Just by putting them on the roof, you'll start saving cash on your cooling and heating bills.   Installing photovoltaic solar cells is a great way to easily tap into an environmentally sustainable energy source, and in sunnier ...

The death of large predators isn't just a tragedy, it can lead to the utter destruction of whole ecosystems--something that is already happening in many parts of the world. You may not have noticed, but we are in the early to middle stages of the Earth's sixth large extinction event. Compared ...

Before the former American football player Dave Duerson killed himself, he asked that his brain be left to researchers studying head injuries among athletes. What it revealed shocked the scientists. Dave Duerson had so much going for him. A former professional American football player, he still carried himself with ...

Suppose at some point the universe ceases to expand, and instead begins collapsing in on itself (as in the “Big Crunch” scenario), and eventually becomes a supermassive black hole. The black hole’s extreme mass produces an extremely strong gravitational field. Through a gravitational version of the so-called Schwinger mechanism, this ...

Imagine you own a small factory, and you learn that your main supplier is going out of business. What do you do? You put on a brave face for employees and investors, and scramble to find alternatives. That's pretty much where managers of the International Space Station find themselves. "Because there's so ...

Nuclear fission powers the movement of Earth's continents and crust, a   consortium of physicists and other scientists is now reporting, confirming long-standing thinking on this topic. Using neutrino detectors in Japan and Italy—the Kamioka Liquid-Scintillator Antineutrino Detector (KamLAND) and the Borexino Detector—the scientists arrived at their conclusion by measuring ...

1. Let the Sun Shine In In an age of global warming and catastrophic climate change, the sun just might become our enemy, but for the time being, it can power a variety of gadgets from a speakerphone and desk lamp to a keyboard and a boom box. The devices often ...

According to a new survey from Retrevo, 34% of iPhone users are under the mistaken impression that they already have "4G" cellular technology on their devices, highlighting the confusion that has resulted from shifting definitions of just what constitutes "4G" speeds. Quote: Maybe the "4" in the iPhone 4 name gives iPhone ...