Tag: science

Can nuclear fusion help fuel the world?

Sushmitha Ramakrishnan The US Department of Energy will announce a major breakthrough in nuclear fusion technology this week, department spokespeople said Sunday. The milestone announcement is expected from Washington on Tuesday. The announcement was made shortly after the Financial Times reported scientists at the California-based Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) successfully generated a “net energy gain” using nuclear fusion in a lab… Read More Can nuclear fusion help fuel the world?

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Joe Moran: the story behind our planet’s most famous photo, December 24, 1968

First posted December 22, 2018 When Bill Anders took this photograph from the Apollo spacecraft on Christmas Eve in 1968, our relationship with the world changed forever .This photograph is now half a century old. It was taken by the astronaut Bill Anders on Christmas Eve 1968 as the Apollo 8 spacecraft rounded the dark side of… Read More Joe Moran: the story behind our planet’s most famous photo, December 24, 1968

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Never-before-seen minerals discovered in Somalian meteorite

By TROY FARAH A space rock that crashed in Somalia decades ago lay partially encased in sand until 2020, when researchers dug it up and sliced into it for samples. Inside the 15 ton meteorite — the ninth largest ever found intact on this planet — were two minerals, and possibly a third, that had never before been seen on Earth. The… Read More Never-before-seen minerals discovered in Somalian meteorite

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Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder: ‘There are quite a few areas where physics blurs into religion’

Sabine Hossenfelder is a German theoretical physicist who writes books and runs a YouTube channel (with 618,000 subscribers at time of writing) called Science Without the Gobbledygook. Born in Frankfurt, she studied mathematics at the Goethe Universität and went on to focus on particle physics – her PhD explored the possibility that the Large Hadron Collider… Read More Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder: ‘There are quite a few areas where physics blurs into religion’

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Embrace what may be the most important green technology ever. It could save us all

George Monbiot So what do we do now? After 27 summits and no effective action, it seems that the real purpose was to keep us talking. If governments were serious about preventing climate breakdown, there would have been no Cops 2-27. The major issues would have been resolved at Cop1, as the ozone depletion crisis… Read More Embrace what may be the most important green technology ever. It could save us all

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The Illogic and Inanity of the Religious Right in India

S.K. Arun Murthi I wrote a short critical article a few weeks ago on the ideas of some ancient Indian schools of thought. My critique was aimed at revealing how such ideas are pseudoscientific and pseudo-philosophical and, therefore, incompatible with that of modern science (I had written this article in the context of ISRO co-hosting the ‘Akash… Read More The Illogic and Inanity of the Religious Right in India

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Air pollution: Uncovering the dirty secret behind BP’s bumper profits

By Owen Pinnell Far removed from the world leaders making climate pledges at COP, are people like Ali Hussein Julood, a young leukaemia survivor living on an Iraqi oil field co-managed by BP. When the BBC discovered BP was not declaring the field’s gas flaring, Ali helped us to reveal the truth about the poisonous… Read More Air pollution: Uncovering the dirty secret behind BP’s bumper profits

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Apocalypse in the rear-view mirror

Magdalena Taube Krystian Woznicki The planet, as authoritarian capitalism’s plaything, is subject to real-world economic-ecological downward spirals. And yet exorbitant space exploration projects continue to build escapist dreams on extractivism. And the threat of nuclear war continues to push at the limits of tenuous environmental stability. Earthrise reloaded When the Tesla Gigafactory opened in Brandenburg, Elon… Read More Apocalypse in the rear-view mirror

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Lee McIntyre. The Attack on Truth and our age of willful ignorance

First posted June 12, 2015 To see how we treat the concept of truth these days, one might think we just don’t care any more. Politicians pronounce that global warming is a hoax. An alarming number of middle-class parents have stopped giving their children routine vaccinations, on the basis of discredited research. Meanwhile many commentators… Read More Lee McIntyre. The Attack on Truth and our age of willful ignorance

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