Number of words: 168 In a waste ore called pitchblende, a black sludge that came from the peaty forests of Joachimsthal in what is now the Czech Republic, the Curies found the first signal of a new element—an element many times more radioactive than uranium. The Curies set about distilling the boggy sludge to trap … Read more

Number of words: 157 The two tenets might have seemed simplistic, but they allowed Virchow to propose a crucially important hypothesis about the nature of human growth. If cells only arose from other cells, then growth could occur in only two ways: either by increasing cell numbers or by increasing cell size. Virchow called these … Read more

Number of words: 2,110 “Spanish Influenza – what it is and how it should be treated,” read the reassuringly factual headline to an advert for Vick’s VapoRub back in 1918. The text beneath included nuggets of wisdom such as “stay quiet” and “take a laxative”. Oh, and to apply their ointment liberally, of course. The … Read more

Number of words: 341 Didymos, a 2,650-foot-wide asteroid, has an atypical cosmic companion— a 535 foot-wide satellite named Didymoon (10). These new two celestial bodies are not making a dangerous rendezvous with Earth, but they do provide an interesting opportunity for an apocalyptic dress rehearsal. NASA and ESA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will head … Read more

Number of words: 337 After revisiting decades-old data from the Voyager 2 flyby in Jan 1986, NASA scientists have found a shocking discovery. The analysis has revealed a “zigzag” in the magnetic data, just lasting one minute in the Voyager 2’s 45-hour flyby. The zigzag was previously not detected as the data was not analyzed … Read more

Number of words: 1,208 Earth turned faster at the end of the time of the dinosaurs than it does today, rotating 372 times a year, compared to the current 365, according to a new study of fossil mollusk shells from the late Cretaceous. This means a day lasted only 23 and a half hours, according … Read more

Number of words: 618 What did Earth look like 3.2 billion years ago? New evidence suggests the planet was covered by a vast ocean and had no continents at all. Continents appeared later, as plate tectonics thrust enormous, rocky land masses upward to breach the sea surfaces, scientists recently reported. They found clues about this … Read more

Number of words: 1,405 In April 1831, a bunch of Calcutta’s notables, bhadralok in local parlance, all managing committee members of Hindu College (later, Presidency College and now, Presidency University), met. They had to decide the fate of a young professor in the educational institution they ran—a young man who was part-Portuguese, part-English, and part-Indian. … Read more

Number of words: 83 Before the seventeenth century, the goals of science were wisdom, understanding the natural order, and living in harmony with it. In the seventeenth century this attitude, which could call as an ecological attitude, changed into its opposite. Ever since Bacon the goal of science and technology has been knowledge that can … Read more

Number of words: 146 Some day, then, a point will be reached where the only unexplained features of this network of theories will be the elements of the scientific framework. Beyond that point, the theory will no longer be able to express its results in words, or in rational concepts, and will thus go beyond … Read more