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Un œil suisse rivé sur les autres mondes
Par Olivier Dessibourg Des chercheurs suisses souhaitent construire Cheops, premier gros satellite suisse, devisé à 70 millions de francs, pour étudier…
Un œil suisse rivé sur les autres mondes
Par Olivier Dessibourg Des chercheurs suisses souhaitent construire Cheops, premier gros satellite suisse, devisé à 70 millions de francs, pour étudier les exoplanètes. Cette mission renforcerait encore la place déjà dominante de la Suisse dans ce domaine en pleine expansion Les Suisses étaient les premiers, en 1995, et ils comptent bien le rester! Il y a 17 ans, des astronomes genevois ont détecté la première exoplanète, tournant autour d’une étoile située hors du système solaire. Aujourd’hui, cette traque aux autres mondes constitue…
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Beauty
The Sombrero Galaxy in Infrared Credit: R. Kennicutt (Steward Obs.) et al., SSC, JPL, Caltech, NASA Explanation: This floating ring…
Beauty
The Sombrero Galaxy in Infrared Credit: R. Kennicutt (Steward Obs.) et al., SSC, JPL, Caltech, NASA Explanation: This floating ring is the size of a galaxy. In fact, it is part of the photogenic Sombrero Galaxy, one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. The dark band of dust that obscures the mid-section of the Sombrero Galaxy in optical light actually glows brightly in infrared light. The above image, digitally sharpened, shows the infrared glow, recently…
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Seasonal Subtleties
(from Science, editor’s choice) H. Jesse Smith Much has been made of an alleged lack of global climate warming over…
Seasonal Subtleties
(from Science, editor’s choice) H. Jesse Smith Much has been made of an alleged lack of global climate warming over the past decade, a condition to which climate change deniers repeatedly have referred in their attempts to argue that global temperatures do not support the consensus view that climate warming is continuing as expected. Have we been looking in the right place for evidence that climate still is getting hotter, though? Cohen et al. provide evidence that we have not.…
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Rats work to free caged mates, demonstrating empathy
Empathy was thought to be an emotion reserved to higher mammals such as primates. But a new experiment with rats…
Rats work to free caged mates, demonstrating empathy
Empathy was thought to be an emotion reserved to higher mammals such as primates. But a new experiment with rats is proving that theory wrong. Rats, when faced with the choice of eating a bunch of chocolate all by themselves, or freeing a caged pal and then splitting the sweets with them, will take what, to the human eye, looks like the less selfish course. This experiment shows that, from an evolutionary perspective, traits like empathy developed earlier than originally…
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Hubble Zooms in on Double Nucleus in Andromeda Galaxy
A new Hubble Space Telescope image centers on the 100-million-solar-mass black hole at the hub of the neighboring spiral galaxy…
Hubble Zooms in on Double Nucleus in Andromeda Galaxy
A new Hubble Space Telescope image centers on the 100-million-solar-mass black hole at the hub of the neighboring spiral galaxy M31, or the Andromeda galaxy, the only galaxy outside the Milky Way visible to the naked eye and the only other giant galaxy in the local group. This is a Hubble image of the 100-million-solar-mass black hole at the hub of the neighboring spiral…
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Science news highlights of 2011
The BBC News website’s science editor Paul Rincon looks back at an eventful year in science and the environment. The…
Science news highlights of 2011
The BBC News website’s science editor Paul Rincon looks back at an eventful year in science and the environment. The year 2011 offered up glimpses of Earth-like planets, hints of the Higgs boson and suggestions of a discovery that could turn modern physics on its head. Headlines were dominated by the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which resulted in the loss of thousands of lives and plunged the country into a nuclear emergency. January – Another Earth? The scientific…
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Nature: 10 for 2011
Rebellion. Tragedy. Breakthrough. Crime. These are just a few of the major events that had an impact on science this year. Revolutionary.…
Nature: 10 for 2011
Rebellion. Tragedy. Breakthrough. Crime. These are just a few of the major events that had an impact on science this year. Revolutionary. Whistle-blower. Mechanic. Crook. These are just a few of the people who had central roles in those events. Behind every twist and turn in science is a person — perhaps brilliant, selfless and inspirational, or fickle, ambitious and egotistical. Each has their own story to tell. Collectively, those stories are woven into the fascinating fabric of scientific research that this publication probes and reports. So…
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Nobel de medicina 2011: mixed feelings
En su sitio internet, Bruno Lemaitre declara sus mixed feelings acerca del premio concedido a Jules Hoffmann. Comienza diciendo: Although…
Nobel de medicina 2011: mixed feelings
En su sitio internet, Bruno Lemaitre declara sus mixed feelings acerca del premio concedido a Jules Hoffmann. Comienza diciendo: Although I was expecting this news following rumours at the 2011 Toll meeting, I didn’t expect it so early. In a way, I am glad the jury selected our story on “Toll in Drosophila immunity” (Lemaitre et al. Cell 1996) since the discovery path identifying TLRs (Toll-like receptors) as major regulators of immunity was complex and also involved other key findings.…
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Nobel de química 2011 y mosaicos matemáticos
El premio Nobel de química 2011 fue concedido a Daniel Shechtman por su descubrimiento de los casi-cristales. Como han señalado…
Nobel de química 2011 y mosaicos matemáticos
El premio Nobel de química 2011 fue concedido a Daniel Shechtman por su descubrimiento de los casi-cristales. Como han señalado varios matemáticos, es notable que los mosaicos (o teselas) invocados por los investigadores de casi-cristales hayan sido descubiertos antes. Este artículo de Fernando Alcalde (click aquí, en francés, +) se refiere a las fuentes matemáticas, que datan de varios siglos, del descubrimiento de Shechtman. Ver también el artículo Descubriendo el plano, de A. Lozano Rojo (en español, +). …
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The Golden Age
Un interesante panel con el título de The Golden Age: A look at the original roots of Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive…
The Golden Age
Un interesante panel con el título de The Golden Age: A look at the original roots of Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science and Neuroscience se desarrolló en el MIT en mayo 2011. Participaron Steven Pinker, Harvard; Emilio Bizzi, MIT; Sydney Brenner, Crick-Jacobs Center; Noam Chomsky, MIT; Marvin Minsky, MIT; Barbara H. Partee, University of Massachussets, Amherts, y Patrick H. Winston, MIT. En su intervención, Sydney Brenner hace referencia a un trabajo de John von Neumann, Theory of self-reproducing automata, y explica…