Category: Science
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The Universe in Perspective
The age of the universe is about 13.75 billion years. The diameter of the observable universe is estimated at about 28 billion parsecs (93 billion light-years). As a reminder, a light-year is a unit of length equal to just under 10 trillion kilometers (or about 6 trillion miles). The Observable Universe consists of the galaxies…
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Death Rituals in the Animal Kingdom
From the BBC Future: We know humans find some form of value in guarding or watching the bodies of the deceased, but in the first article for his new column, Jason Goldman explains how we are beginning to discover that animals may have similar needs. When a Jewish person dies, according to tradition, a member…
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Send In The Clones!
Fifteen years ago a sheep called Dolly arrived into our world and caused a sensation. A living, breathing (and bleating) sheep created from an adult cell, Dolly was not the first animal to be cloned, but she became the most famous. After Dolly’s birth, many scientists predicted flocks of all types of cloned species were…
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Big History Project by David Christian
Big history weaves evidence and insights from many scientific and historical disciplines across 13.7 billion years into a single, accessible origin story. One that explores who we are, how we got here, how we are connected to everything around us, and where we may be heading. The concept arose from a desire to go beyond…
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Human Evolution Dating Methods
Here of some of the well-tested methods of dating used in the study of early humans: Potassium-argon dating, Argon-argon dating, Carbon-14 (or Radiocarbon), and Uranium series: All of these methods measure the amount of radioactive decay of chemical elements; the decay occurs in a consistent manner, like a clock, over long periods of time. Thermo-Luminescence, Optically…
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Human Evolution – Milestones and Family Tree
During the period of human evolution, the Earth’s climate has fluctuated between warm and cold. Some of the most important milestones in human evolution occurred during times of greatest fluctuations. Explore the relationship between climate and human evolution more deeply by clicking on the image. While the exact number of early human species is debated,…
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The Cosmic Calendar
The Cosmic Calendar is a scale in which the 13.7 billion year lifetime of the universe is mapped onto a single year. At this scale the Big Bang took place on January 1 at midnight, and the current time is mapped to December 31 at midnight. The concept was popularized by Carl Sagan in his…
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The Secrets of Haiti’s Living Dead
In seeking scientific documentation of the existence of zombies, anthropologist Wade Davis found himself looking beyond the stereotype and mysteries of voodoo and directly into a cohesive system of social control in rural Haiti: Five years ago, a man walked into l’Estère, a village in central Haiti, approached a peasant woman named Angelina Narcisse, and…
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The Evolution of Man’s Best Friend
Franz Kafka once said: “All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog”. Oh Mr. Kafka, you have no idea how right you were. Contained within the most lovable of pets are the secrets to understanding evolution through natural selection. I would like to share with you the fascinating theory…
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Merely a Theory?
I would like to take this opportunity to explain something that is consistently being repeated incorrectly by certain members in our society, that “Evolution is only a theory!” In a discussion moderated by anchor Miles O’Brien on CNN, Christine O’Donnell squared off against Michael McKinney, a University of Tennessee professor of evolutionary biology. Not only…