Fragments of Science

Claims that 35 years after its launch, Voyager 1 may have left the solar system to become the first manmade object in interstellar space recently sparked vigorous debate between scientists.

The debate centres on whether or not Voyager has crossed the boundary of the heliosphere, the giant magnetic bubble emanating from the Sun.

"The heliosphere is dominated by cosmic rays and charged particles (plasma) streaming out from the Sun at supersonic speeds called the solar wind," says Dr Simon O'Toole from the Australian Astronomical Observatory.

"It helps to keep out much of the gas, dust and other particles that comprise the interstellar medium, the material which makes up the Milky Way galaxy."

Ten million years after the world's largest mass extinction, a lineage of animals thought to have led to dinosaurs took hold in what is now Tanzania and Zambia, according to new research.

Scientists have long observed that species seem to have become increasingly capable of evolving in response to changes in the environment.

The four groups of chemicals that trigger consumption advisories — PCBs, mercury, dioxins and PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfate) — have all been associated with endocrine disruption.

A bizarre stellar system made up of two dead stars 7000 light-years away has put Einstein's famous general theory of relativity under its most extreme test yet.

Photo by Takeshi Inomata, University of Arizona
The astronomy, calendar, and apocalyptic predictions have been well documented, but there's one part of Maya history that researchers have yet to...

As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise, scientists look back four million years for answers on what to expect from climate   The Pliocene is the geologic era between five million and three ...

They might not seem like the most expressive eyes you’ve ever seen—but the beady eyes of extinct trilobites have a lot to say. Recently, they’ve given us some new insights into the evolution of vision.

Trilobites are one of the first animals in the fossil record to develop complex eyes (as opposed to the light-sensitive spots that passed as early eyes). So understanding trilobite vision is also understanding the origins of eyes themselves.

An international study used tree rings and pollen to build the first record of global climate change, continent by continent, over 2,000 years.

Researchers say that changes in the climate can be traced in the ocean hundreds of years before there is any trace of it in the atmosphere.

Prehistoric Australia was settled by thousands, not just a handful, of humans, suggesting deliberate rather than accidental colonisation of the continent, according to new research.

A flurry of innovation has led to a half dozen new bioengineering techniques to make useful wiring diagrams that give scientists a clearer idea of how brains work.

Blood tests could one day be used to tell who is at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, say researchers.

A discovery that reveals how bird feathers get their patterns also has implications for regenerative medicine, say scientists.

An international team of researchers, including Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, geochemist James Day, has found new evidence that material contained in oceanic lava flows originated in Earth’s ancient Archean crust.

Is our view of how genes contribute to our traits still current 60 years after the double helix structure of DNA was unravelled? Yes, argue Australian scientists.

Scientists believe they have identified a time in history that provides the most complete picture of how the planet might respond to rising CO2 levels.

A fossilized fish from ancient Canada is being hailed in a new British study as a rare portal to a key moment in evolution, when humanity’s primitive ancestors were “experimenting” with traits that would become fundamental to the diverse family [...]...

The researchers behind a climate neutral housing district in Trondheim often hear their plan blasted as utopian. And it is. But that doesn’t make it impossible or unrealistic.

Futurism is a richly metaphorical body of thought. It has to be; much of what we talk about is on the verge of unimaginable, so we have to resort to metaphors for it to make any kind of sense.

Scientists believe invisible storm flashes of gamma and x-rays may be caused by super-fast cosmic electrons hitting earth