Huge asteroid headed for close encounter with Earth
A huge asteroid will pass closer to Earth than the moon Tuesday, giving scientists a rare chance for study without having to go through the time and expense of launching a probe, officials said.
Dreams of a Final Theory by Steven Weinberg
Here is an elegant, leisurely and profound contemplation of science by a man who doesn’t know what he is talking about. That last barb is true only in one very limited sense. In every other respect, Steven Weinberg is the perfect guide: he is a Nobel laureate; he woke the publishing world up more than 30 years ago with a stunning introduction to modern cosmology called The First Three Minutes; he was a driving force behind what was going to be the world’s most extravagant experiment; and he explains himself with a fabulous command of language.
Fly sniffs molecule’s quantum vibrations
How does a nose generate the signals that the brain registers as smell? The conventional theory says it’s down to the different shapes of smelly molecules. But fruit flies have now distinguished between two molecules with identical shapes, providing the first experimental evidence to support a controversial theory that the sense of smell can operate by detecting molecular vibrations.
Juan Enriquez shares mindboggling science
Juan Enriquez thinks and writes about the profound changes that genomics and other life sciences will cause in business, technology, politics and society.
A broad thinker who studies the intersection of science, business and society, Juan Enriquez has a talent for bridging disciplines to build a coherent look ahead. Enriquez was the founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project, and has published widely on topics from the technical (global nucleotide data flow) to the sociological (gene research and national competitiveness), and was a member of Celera Genomics founder Craig Venter’s marine-based team to collect genetic data from the world’s oceans.
Jeff Hawkins on how brain science will change computing
Treo creator Jeff Hawkins urges us to take a new look at the brain — to see it not as a fast processor, but as a memory system that stores and plays back experiences to help us predict, intelligently, what will happen next.
Jeff Hawkins’ Palm PDA became such a widely used productivity tool during the 1990s that some fanatical users claimed it replaced their brains. But Hawkins’ deepest interest was in the brain itself. So after the success of the Palm and Treo, which he brought to market at Handspring, Hawkins delved into brain research at the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience in Berkeley, Calif., and a new company called Numenta.
