What hath God wrought!Num 23:22 God brought them out of Egypt; hehath as it were the strength of an unicorn.

Num 23:23 Surely there is no enchantmentagainst Jacob, neither is there any divinationagainst Israel: according to this time it shall besaid of Jacob and of Israel, What hath Godwrought!

Rom 1:20 For the invisible things of him from thecreation of the world are clearly seen, being understoodby the things that are made, even his eternal power andGodhead; so that they are without excuse:

(All examples are from Scientific American magazines.. year, month, and page number..e.g.. 1511-70)

In everyday life, distance and location aremundane absolutes.

Yet physics now suggests that at the mostfundamental level, the universe is nonlocal thereis no such thing as place or distance.

Initially Isaac Newton s conception of gravityseemed to imply the phenomenon of nonlocalitybecause the attractive force between massesappeared to act magically across expanses.

Albert Einstein s general relativity insteadascribed gravity to the curvature of spacetime.

Yet it introduced a deeper sense of nonlocalityby showing that space-time positions have nointrinsic meaning. (1511-70)

A babys brain enters a sensitive period at theage of six months a time when a child is bestable to perceive the sounds of a language or twoin preparation for developing the fluent tonesand cadences of a native speaker.

The built-in capacity for language does not onits own propel the child past the first utterancesof Mama and Dada.

To learn this most important of social skillsrequires that a baby pay careful attention tocountless hours of parent-speak. Insights fromresearch into early language acquisition havereached a degree of sophistication that hasenabled neuroscientists to contemplate thepossibility of using brain recordings to testwhether a childs brain is developing as itshould. (1511-64)

Something is causing the expansion of theuniverse to speed upbut what?

Scientists have proposed that a force called darkenergy is behind the acceleration or,alternatively, that current understanding ofgravity must be modified. If dark energy is theculprit, at least two explanations are possible.

A new project called the Dark Energy Survey(DES) will aim to solve this mystery by studyingthe history of cosmic expansion and the extentto which dark energy may have stymied theclumping together of galaxies throughout space.

It will tackle these questions in fourways through observing supernovae, thesignatures of primordial sound waves,gravitational lensing (the bending of light bymatter in the universe) and clusters of galaxies.(1511-40)

Egypt s most famous monument, the 481-foot-tall, 756-foot-wide Great Pyramid of Giza wasbuilt around 2,525 B.C.. It was the tallestbuilding in the world for at least the next 3,800years.

For years archaeologists who study the Gizapyramids in Egypt have focused on theengineering details of these monuments.

But the real significance of the pyramids lies inthe social organization they gave rise to. Newfinds in the ancient city of Heit el-Ghurab nearGiza and a contemporaneous Red Sea portknown as Wadi el-Jarf are revealing thegovernment, labor and trade infrastructuresthat the pharaohs developed to get thepyramids, particularly the Great Pyramid, built.

These infrastructures brought Egypttremendous lasting wealth and enriched theeconomies of its trading partners. (1511-32)

IceCube is a neutrino-hunting particle detectorburied in ice at the South Pole.

Neutrinos usually fly straight through matterbut occasionally smash into atoms in the ice tocreate signals IceCube can detect.

The project has discovered dozens of neutrinoswith higher energies than any found before,many of which most likely originated in extremecosmic events taking place in the far-offuniverse.

These cosmic neutrinos can be used as tracers tostudy the nature of the mysterious distantevents and should help explain the strange

sources of the cosmic rays that bombard Earthfrom deep space. (1510-58)

I, at any rate, am convinced that He is notplaying at dice, Albert Einstein wrote to acolleague in 1926.

Repeated over the years, his sound bite becamethe quintessential put-down of quantummechanics and its embrace of randomness.

Closer examination, though, reveals thatEinstein did not reject quantum mechanics orits indeterminism, although he did thinkforsolid scientific reasons that the randomnesscould not be a fundamental feature of nature.

Today many philosophers argue that physics isboth indeterministic and deterministic,depending on the level of reality beingconsidered.

This view dissolves the much debated dilemmabetween determinism and free will. Even ifeverything that particles do is preordained, thechoices we make can be completely openbecause the low-level laws governing particlesare not the same as the high-level lawsgoverning human consciousness. (1509-88)

Einstein s general theory of relativity has stood

firm for a century, but it has never been testedin places where gravity is extremely strong, suchas the edge of a black hole.

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a globalnetwork of radio telescopes, will perform suchtests by resolving the event horizon ofSagittarius A*, the black hole at the center ofthe Milky Way.

These observations will explore whetherSagittarius A* is a black hole or an exotic objectsuch as a naked singularity. If it is a black hole,does it behave the way general relativity says itshould? If the EHT detects deviations fromEinstein s predictions, other instruments thatcome online in the next several years will beable to independently check those results. (1509-74)

Traveling very fast allows you to go forward intime.

Traveling backward in time is much harder, butmathematics says it is possible throughgeometric structures called closed timelikecurves.

A wormhole is one such curve.

You would enter it through a spherical opening.

Once inside, everything you observed in spacewould be normal and so would the passage oftime.

Closed timelike curves are useful for testingtheories about the cosmos.

For example, if one were present at the start ofour universe, it could have allowed the universeto create itself.

Quantum mechanics and indeed, the nature ofthe universe itselfmight forbid wormholes andtherefore prevent backward time travel.

Physicists just do not know yet if this is thecase. (1509-68)

At the end of his life, Einstein tried to create atheory of everything, governing all forces in thecosmos.

He failed, in part because two of those forces,the weak and strong, had yet to be discovered.

Physicists are making the attempt again ,starting with data on new types of particles and

fields. (1509-60)

Despite his immense powers of perception,Einstein repeatedly failed to grasp the meaningof some of his own most significant ideas or elseoverlooked their importance.

As a result, he dismissed the importance ofgravitational lensing, initially doubted thereality of gravitational waves and failed toanticipate the discovery of the expandinguniverse. (1509 -50)

One of Einstein s enduring contributions tophysics was his use of gedanken experiments, orthought experiments.

His intuition about falling elevators, forexample, led to his greatest achievement,the general theory of relativity.

Today some of the most important questions intheoretical physics involve thought experimentsabout black holes.

Yet there is a problem: these thoughtexperiments may be so far removed fromempirical data as to be untestable. (1509-46)

Einstein s realization that gravity andacceleration are equivalent put him on an eight-year path to generalize his special theory ofrelativity.

He raced to discover the correct mathematicalformulas for his theory before a rival,mathematician David Hilbert, could do so first.

Einstein simultaneously struggled on the homefront, as he went through a divorce from hisfirst wife and a separation from his sons whilehe courted a cousin whom he would later marry.

Despite these challenges, Einstein triumphedand delivered one of the worlds supremescientific works in his general theory ofrelativity. (1509 -38)

Einstein s first major achievements came in1905, when he published four groundbreakingpapers,including his completion of special relativity.

Ten years later he expanded that theory toinclude gravity, creating general relativity. Theidea toppled Isaac Newton s physics andredefined our notion of space and time.

It launched new strands of research thatscientists are still pursuing and made its creator

a star.

Over the past century Einstein s ideas haveintermingled with culture and art and shapedourworld in infinite, indelible ways. (1509 -34)

Astronomers know of thousands of planetsorbiting other stars but have imaged only ahandful.

They have discovered and studied all the restmostly through indirect measurements.Imaging a planet allows researchers to learnmore about its composition, climate andprospects for life.

But imaging is hard because planets are faintand close to much brighter stars. ImagingEarth-like planets is beyond the reach ofcurrent telescopes.

A new generation of instruments is now takingpictures of bigger, brighter worlds that resembleour own Jupiter.

These new instruments will help scientists learnhow giant planets form and how they sculpttheir surroundings, preparing the way for futurefacilities to take pictures of alien Earths. (1508-40)

Of all the human species that have lived on theearth, only Homo sapiens lived on the earth,only Homo sapiens managed to colonize theentire globe.

Scientists have long puzzled over how ourspecies alone managed to disperse so far andwide.

A new hypothesis holds that two innovationsunique to H. sapiens primed it for worlddomination: a genetically determinedpropensity for cooperation with unrelatedindividuals and advanced projectile weapons.(1508-32)

The largest proof in mathematics supports thenotion that symmetry in the universe can bedivided into four categories.

Its 15,000 pages provide the crucial evidencebehind something called the EnormousTheorem.

The few aging people who understand the prooffear they will die before a younger generationtakes over.

Mathematicians have launched a rescue projectto streamline the proof and save it before the

knowledge vanishes. (1507-68)

The dog was the first domesticated species.

Yet despite years of research, scientists havestruggled to figure out when, where and how itoriginated. Recent DNA studies have thrownnew light on the dog s wolf ancestor and anambitious project is now under way to naildown the timing and location of dogdomestication.

Such insights will complement clues to how thehuman-dog relationship shifted in themillennia that followed. (1507-60)

Scientists know there must be more matter inthe universe than what is visible.

Searches for this dark matter have focused on asingle unseen particle, but decades ofexperiments have been unsuccessful at findingit.

Complex dark matter could form dark atomsand molecules and even clump together to makehidden galactic disks that overlap with thespiral arms of the Milky Way and othergalaxies.

Experiments are under way to search for

evidence of such a dark sector. (1506-50)

Like we humans, members of many animalspecies spend their lives in complex socialnetworks that influence their lives in complexsocial networks that influence their and thegroups behavior.

Researchers are using techniques developed forthe study of human social networks to analyzethese animal systems.

The structures of animal networks can play alarge part in mating opportunities, the spread ofdisease and information, and the teaching ofsurvival skills. Analyses of these networks showthat certain individuals play outsize roles inmaintaining the overall well-being of thecommunity. (1506-50)

The night sky may look dark, but it is actuallyfilled with the accumulated light of all thegalaxies that have shone in the universeshistory.

This extragalactic back ground light is difficultto detect because it has spread out throughout

the expanding cosmos and because it isoutshone by brighter nearby sources of light.

Astronomers have finally been able to measurethis light by observing how gamma rays fromdistant bright galaxies called blazars aredimmed when they collide with photons of theextragalactic background light.

Studying the background in this way allowsscientists to examine the record of cosmichistory that the light preserves. (1506-38)

MRI studies show that the teenage brain is notan old child brain or a half-baked adult brain ;it is a unique entity characterized by changeability and an increase in networking amongbrain regions.

The limbic system, which drives emotions,intensifies at puberty, but the prefrontal cortex,which controls impulses, does not mature untilthe 20s.

This mismatch makes teens prone to risk takingbut also allows them to adapt readily to theirenvironment.

Earlier onset of puberty in children worldwide isexpanding the years during which themismatch occurs.

Greater understanding of the teen brain shouldhelp parents and society better distinguishtypical behavior from mental illness whilehelping teens become the people they want tobe. (1506-32)

Paleontologists have known about T. rex andother giant tyrannosaurs for decades.

But they were unable to piece together when thetyrannosaurs originated and what they evolvedfrom because they lacked the fossils to do so.

Recent fossil finds have gone a long way towardfilling those gaps in scientists understanding ofthis iconic group.

Together these discoveries reveal thattyrannosaurs have surprisingly deepandhumbleevolutionary roots. Furthermore, thegroup encompasses a far greater diversity offorms than experts had anticipatedincludingsome with truly bizarre anatomical features.(1505-34)

Cichlid fishes are the most diverse family ofvertebrate animals on record, with more than2,500 species.

The recent sequencing of several cichlid

genomes has begun to furnish clues to theirastounding to their astounding diversification.

Cichlid genomes exhibit a number of specialfeatures that may have accelerated the evolutionof this group.

Other genome traits may explain cichlids tendency to independently evolve the sameadaptations repeatedly. (1504-70)

Thirty years ago psychologists mistakenlyregarded cultivation of self-esteem as a panaceafor personal problems and social ills.

Self-control, not self-esteem, turned out to bethe real deal. The ability to regulate impulsesand desires is key to living and working withothers.

The dynamics of self-control are, in fact, quitecomplex.

Willpower can be depleted through overuse as ifit were a repository of energy.

Research on self-control is now extending innew directions to provide insight into the rootsof addiction and how to combat it. (1504-60)

Stephen Hawking s discovery that particles leak

out of black holes revealed a fissure in scientists understanding of physics.

These escaped particles seem to imply thatinformation is destroyed inside blackholes something quantum mechanics forbids.

An attempt to resolve this quandary usingstring theory looked promising, but recentcalculations show that black holes are evenmore perplexing than was thought.

Barriers of high-energy particles called firewallssurround black holes, according to calculationsby the author and his colleagues.

Such firewalls may represent the end of spaceitself. Resolving the paradoxes of firewalls couldoffer a path toward unifying quantummechanics and general relativity. (1504-36)

Intense heat and light near the young sunlargely confined water to the outer solar systemduring planet formation, leading to relativelydry inner worlds.

Earth s water probably arrived late in theplanet s development, via showers of asteroids orcomets. But the data in hand leave room foralternative ideas.

Exactly how our water got here could remain anunsolved mystery for some time, pending thequestions of when and if we will commencemore robust exploration of the rest of the solarsystem. A one-size-fits-all solution for thesource of Earth s water may never be found.(1503-36)

Long-standing view of Neanderthals, our closestrelatives, holds that they lagged far behindanatomically modern Homo sapiens in terms ofcognitive ability.

Studies show that they did differ from H.sapiens in their brain anatomy and DNA, butthe functional significance of these differencesis unclear.

Cultural remains provide clearer insights intothe Neanderthal mindand narrow the supposedmental gap between them and us.

The findings suggest that factors unrelated tointelligence drove Neanderthals to extinctionand allowed H. sapiens to flourish. (1502-36)

A major question in neuroscience, in philosophyand in broader public debate is whether theassumption that we have free will isfundamentally misconstrued.

If it is, many legal and moral precepts that arethe basis for our social institutions are subjectto challenge.

Doubts exist because of sophisticatedexperiments in recent decades that have shownthat the brain initiates at least some actionsbefore we become consciously aware that adecision has been made. If this is so, what role,if any, does free will play?

People may have less free will than they think,but that does not mean they have none at all.

A number of recent experiments by socialpsychologists have shown that consciousreasoning and intentions have shown thatconscious reasoning and intentions have asignificant impact on our actions. (1501-76)

Astronomers are searching for twins of Earthorbiting other sunlike stars.

Detecting Earth-like twins remains at the edgeof our technical capabilities. Larger super-Earths orbiting smaller stars are easier to detectand may be the most common type of planet.

New thinking suggests that these systems,along with massive moons orbiting gas-giantplanets, may also be super habitablemore

conducive to life than our own familiar planet.(1501-32)

Mimicry is a phenomenon in which one speciesevolves to resemble another.

Species that masquerade as ants are the mostcommon kind of mimic. Yet they have been theleast understood.

But recent studies have pulled back the curtainon ant impersonators and in so doing haverevealed that mimicry is far more complex thanonce was thought. It turns out that animalsexploit mimicry for many reasons and they pay aprice for the advantages it affords. (1412-86)

An excavation in the ancient Maya city ofHolmul in Guatemala has revealed an elaboratefrieze that is elucidating a critical chapter ofMaya history.

The frieze is thought to show the founder of thedynasty that ruled Holmul, which lay at thecenter of a major conflict between twosuperpowers.

Rich in symbols and inscriptions, the artworkholds long-sought clues to Maya governanceduring this important period.(1412-76)

As dwarf galaxies orbit the Milky Way, our owngalaxys gravity slowly rips them apart into longtails called stellar streams.

Astronomers who think of themselves asgalactic archaeologists use these fossils of lostgalaxies to study the Milky Ways past.

Astronomers discovered the first evidence of anextended stellar stream around our galaxy in2003 and have found about a dozen more sincethen.

Analysis of these streams supports the theorythat the Milky Way grew in pieces byswallowing smaller galaxies.

Future studies of stars orbital and chemicalcharacteristics could reveal the constituents ofstellar streams that have long since dissolved.

Ultimately galactic archaeology could clarify notjust the history of the Milky Way but also theway galaxies in general evolve over time. (1412-54)

Birds, mammals, fish, social insects and manyother animals construct a wide variety ofintricate nests and homes.

Researchers have long known that genes andbehaviors must have evolved to enable creaturesto build these structures.

Only in recent decades have scientists started toreveal the genetics of animal architecture, thephysics that holds their creations together andthe surprisingly simple behavioral rules thatallow many small-brained critters to buildempires.

One day we may be able to create computerprograms that follow the same architecturalrules as social insects to design more efficientcities. (1411-72)

The Kuiper belt is a band of billions of icyasteroids beyond Neptune that are nearlypristine examples of the solar systemsingredients.

Two spacecraft are on missions to probe thebelt s secrets.

One, called Rosetta, is orbiting a comet that wasborn in the Kuiper belt. The other, NewHorizons, is en route to Pluto, the region slargest resident.

By studying the makeup of the Kuiper belt,these missions could hold the key to the solar

systems origins. (1411-46)

Meditation is an ancient pursuit that, in someform, is a part of nearly every world religion. Inrecent years its a part of nearly every worldreligion.

In recent years its practice, derived from variousbranches of Buddhism, has made its way intothe secular world as a means of promotingcalmness and general well-being.

Three common forms of meditation focusedattention, mindfulness and compassion are nowpracticed everywhere, from hospitals to schools,and have increasingly become an object ofscrutiny in scientific laboratories worldwide.

Physiological changes in the brain an alteredvolume of tissue in some areas occur throughmeditation. Practitioners also experiencebeneficial psychological effects: they react fasterto stimuli and are less prone to various forms ofstress. (1411-38)

Earlier this year scientists announced that theyhad found gravitational waves that emanatedfrom the first moments after the big bang.

If confirmed, the discovery would allow

researchers to study the first instants oftimepotentially providing a way to unifyquantum mechanics and gravity.

It could also provide indirect evidence for theexistence of the multiversean infinite bubblingof physically separate universes. (1410-58)

Methane hydrates are massive deposits of gastrapped in vast, icy structures underneath thecoastal seafloor .

They may hold more energy than all knownreserves of oil, coal and natural gas worldwide.Scientists are probing hydrate outcroppings todetermine how easily the gas can be tapped forenergy.

They are also examining how readily themethane can escape on its own when heated bywarming seawater.

Deposits could potentially release enormousquantities of greenhouse gases. In anotherhazard, deposits can expand rapidly whendisturbed by earthquakes, setting off tsunamis.(1410-82)

Some scientists and science communicatorshave claimed that humans are no longer subjectto natural selection and that human evolution

has effectively ceased.

In fact, humans have evolved rapidly andremarkably in the past 30,000 years.

Straight, black hair, blue eyes and lactosetolerance are all examples of relatively recenttraits.

Such rapid evolution has been possible forseveral reasons, including the switch fromhunting and gathering to agrarian-basedsocieties, which permitted human populationsto grow much larger than before.

The more people reproduce within a population,the higher the chance of new advantageousmutations. Humans will undoubtedly continueto evolve into the future.

Although it may seem that we are headedtoward a cosmopolitan blend of human genes,future generations will likely be strikingmosaics of our entire evolutionary past. (1409-86)

Humans it was once thought differed from otheranimals by their use of tools and their overallsuperiority in a range of cognitive abilities.

Close observation of the behaviors of

chimpanzees and other great apes has provedthese ideas to be wrong.

Chimpanzees score as highly as young childrenon tests of general reasoning abilities but lackmany of the social skills that come naturally totheir human cousins.

Unlike humans, chimps do not collaborate inthe large groups needed to build complexsocieties.

Comparison of human and chimp psychologyreveals that an essential source of thedifferences in humans may be the evolution ofthe ability to intuit what another person isthinking so that both can work toward a sharedgoal. (1409-42)

Human beings have a unique ability tocooperate in large, well-organized groups andemploy a complex morality that relies onreputation and punishment.

But much of the foundation for thiscooperation including empathy and altruismcanalso be observed in our primate cousins.

Homo sapiens unique cooperative abilities arewhat have allowed the species to become thedominant one on the earth. (1409-68)

A new theory credits a combination of culturaladvances and unpredictable climate change forthe exceptionally fast rate of evolution in earlyhumans.

Climate change repeatedly led to fragmentationof hominin populations, creating small groupsin which genetic and cultural novelties wererapidly cemented, accelerating speciation.

Our own species, the anatomically distinctiveHomo sapiens, was born out of such an event inAfrica around 200,000 years ago.

About 100,000 years later an African isolate ofour species acquired the ability to use symbols.

It was almost certainly this unique symboliccognition was almost certainly this uniquesymbolic cognition that made it possible toeliminate all hominin competition in little time.(1409-54)

Changes in climate are emerging as elementsthat shaped human evolution over millions ofyears, as scientists learn that such alterationcoincided with the extinction of some of ourancestors and the success of others.

Evidence from ancient soils in East Africa, deep-sea sediments and fossil teeth from ourforerunners combines to reveal rapid swingsbetween wet and dry environments, as well astwo distinct periods when grasslands replacedmore wooded areas.

The emergence of our own genus, Homo, ourvaried diet, advances in stone tool technologyand the very human trait of adaptability in theface of ongoing change may be tied to theseepisodes, according to one theory. (1409-48)

Tracing the evolutionary ancestors of Homosapiens was once thought to be a relativelystraightforward matter: Australopithecus begatHomo erectus, which begat Neandertals, whichbegat us.

Over the past 40 years fossil finds from EastAfrica, among other things, have completelyshattered that hypothesis.

The latest evidence shows that several differenthominin species shared the planet at differenttimes.

Figuring out how they are all relatedand whichones led directly to us will keep paleontologistsbusy for decades to come. where we came from.(1409-42)

HUMAN FAMILY TREE used to be a scragglything.

With relatively few fossils to work from,scientists best guess was that they could all beassigned to just two lineages, one of which wentextinct and the other of which ultimately gaverise to us.

Discoveries made over the past few decadeshave revealed a far more luxuriant tree,howeverone abounding with branches andtwigs that eventually petered out. (1409-40)

Earth orbits one of the hundreds of billions ofstars in our galaxy, which in turn is one ofhundreds of billions our galaxy, which in turn isone of hundreds of billions in the observableuniverse.

This apparent insignificance fits with theCopernican principle that our planet is not thecenter of the cosmos but simply a mediocremember of a mediocre solar system.

Meanwhile there are reasons to think Earth andits life are special, perhaps even singular.

Some evidence comes from the details of ourplanetary circumstances, as well as from the

observation that certain fundamental constantsof nature appear to be finetuned for lifesexistence.

Scientists must reconcile these conflicting ideasto understand where we fit and whether we arealonein the cosmos. (1408-74)

Researchers are conducting hundreds ofexperiments in an effort to bring more rigorousscience to U.S. schools.

The movement started with former presidentGeorge W. Bush s No Child Left Behind Act andhas continued under President Barack Obama.

Using emerging technology and new methods ofdata analysis, researchers are undertakingstudies that would have been impossible even10 years ago.

The new research is challenging widely heldbeliefs, such as that teachers should be judgedprimarily on the basis of their academiccredentials, that classroom size is paramount,and that students need detailed instructions tolearn. (1408-68)

Rising Arctic temperatures are helpingpathogens spread and thrive where they hadnot been before.

Parasites in the far north are sickening muskoxen, ticks are transmitting viruses to people,and Atlantic seals may have transmitted alethal virus to Pacific seals as vanishing sea iceallows their worlds to mix.

Changing climate could help some species, butresearchers fear it will hurt more of them,raising the need for nations to find ways toimprove biosecurity. (1408-58)

Rain Man, the movie starring Dustin Hoff manbrought to popular attention the existence ofsavant, syndromein which people with autismdisplay exceptional intellectual or artistic giftsfrom birth.

Acquired savantism is an alternative form ofthe condition in which a person develops theability to paint, play music or do mentalcalculations after experiencing some form ofbrain injury.

An inner savant may exist in most people if theproper brain circuits are activated or switchedoff through electrical stimulation technologiesor even through focused practice of a particularskill. (1408-52)

Cosmologists have detailed a remarkably

accurate description of the history of theuniverse.

But a few profound questions seem to defy allattempts at understanding. One of thesemysteries is the nature of the big bang itselfthesudden, violent origin of our universe from apoint of infinite density.

The authors have developed ideas that wouldexplain how the big bang came to be.

They imagine that it emerged as a consequenceof the formation of a black hole in a higher-dimensional universe. This theory providesanswers to a number of difficult questions. Itcould also be tested. (1408-36)

Archaeologists have puzzled over the mysteriesof the ancient Mexican city of Teotihuacán fordecades.

Yet an understanding of this society eludedthem.

Recent discoveries have furnished new clues tothe lives these people led and the reach of theirempireand in so doing kindled debate over theirpolitics.

One theory holds that Teotihuacán was ruled by

a single all-powerful king; another picturesseveral elite families competing for control.(1407 -48)

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope hasrevealed massive structures that tower tens ofthousands of light-years over the galacticcenter.

These lobes have been named the Fermibubbles.

Astronomers do not understand the processesthat created the Fermi bubbles, but they suspectthat the bubbles are evidence of recent, violentevents at work in our galaxy.

Two leading explanations exist.

The bubbles may be inflated by a jet of energycoming from our galaxys central black hole orthe accumulated wind of a swarm ofsupernovae. (1407-42)

The modern world is filled with network-connected electronic sensors, but most of thedata they produce are invisible to us, siloed foruse by specific applications.

If we eliminate those silos and enable sensordata to be used by any network-connected

device, the era of ubiquitous computing willtruly arrive.

Although it is impossible to know precisely howubiquitous computing will change our life, alikely possibility is that electronic sensorsembedded in the environment will function asextensions of the human nervous system.

Wearable computing devices could become, ineffect, sensory prosthetics. Sensors andcomputers could make it possible to virtuallytravel to distant environments and be there inreal time, which would have profoundimplications for our concepts of privacy andphysical presence. (1407-36)

In the past decade an increasing number ofneuroscientists and philosophers have arguedthat free will does not exist.

Rather we are pushed around by ourunconscious minds, with the illusion ofconscious control. In parallel, recent studiessuggest that the more people doubt free will, theless they support criminal punishment and theless ethically they behave toward one another.

But science-informed doubt of free will couldactually help us improve our legal system byfocusing less on doling out jail time solely for

the sake of retribution and more ondiscouraging further crime. (1406-76)

Con artistry of the kind in which the scammerrobs Peter to pay Paul has likely been a fixtureof economic activity at least since theDickensian world of the 19th century.

A new look at Ponzis reveals that they are amore ubiquitous feature of modern economiesthan had been previously believedand thatfinancial regulators are ill equipped to deal withthem.

Boom-and-bust activity of financial bubblestakes on a Ponzi-like quality. Meanwhileordinary business practices awarding of stockoptions may be used to camouflage age apyramid scheme. (1406-70)

No mission to Mars has searched for life sincethe Viking program in the 1970s.

Those missions did not find convincingevidence for life, and we now know that theirexperiments were doomed to fail.

A modern search for life on Mars could employbiological tests that we commonly use on Earth.

Such experiments could be included on a

number of missions that are scheduled to travelto Mars by the end of this decade. (1406-44)

For more than a century paleontologists haveused geologic and topographic information toinform their search for fossils.

Yet the discovery of fossils is still largely amatter of luck. New computer models that lookfor hidden patterns in satellite images cangenerate maps of where fossils are likely to belocated, thus helping fossil hunters narrow theirsearch.

Ground truthing of such predictive maps in theAmerican West has shown that they do indeedimprove the odds of finding fossil sites.

In theory, this approach could be usedanywhere in the world. (1405-46)

Supersymmetry postulates that every knownparticle has a hidden superpartner.

Physicists love supersymmetry because it solvesa number of problems that crop up when theytry to extend our understanding of quantummechanics.

It would also potentially solve the mystery of

the universes missing dark matter. Physicistshoped to find evidence of supersymmetry inexperiments at the Large Hadron Collider(LHC).

To date, they have not.

If no evidence arises in the next run of the LHC,supersymmetry will be in trouble.

The failure to find superpartners is brewing acrisis in physics, forcing researchers to questionassumptions from which they have beenworking for decades. (1405-34)

In the 17th century Italian mathematicianBonaventura Cavalieri proposed that everyplane is composed of an infinite number of linesand every solid of an infinite number of planes.

One could use these indivisibles, he said, tocalculate length, area and volumean importantstep on the way to modern integral calculus.

Swiss mathematician Paul Guldin, Cavalieri scontemporary, vehemently disagreed, criticizingindivisibles as illogical.

But the men argued for more than purelymathematical reasons.

They were members of two religious orders withsimilar spellings but very different philosophies:Guldin was a Jesuit and Cavalieri a Jesuat.

The former believed in using mathematics toimpose a rigid logical structure on a chaoticuniverse, whereas the latter was more interestedin following his intuitions to understand theworld in all its complexity. (1404-82)

A mammoth effort to create a genetic atlas ofthe human brain has succeeded in mapping theactivity of all genes throughout the entirety ofsix typical adult brains.

The new atlas reveals profound differencesbetween mice and human brains that raisequestions about the widespread use of mice asexperimental proxies for people.

The atlas, along with other projects under wayto map the detailed structure of the brain, willserve as landmark references in the search forthe causes and cures of neurological disease.(1404-70)

For decades researchers have been locked indebate over how and when human huntingbegan and how big a role it played in humanevolution.

Recent analyses of human anatomy, stone toolsand animal bones are helping to fill in thedetails of this game-changing shift insubsistence strategy.

This evidence indicates that hunting evolved farearlier than some scholars had envisionedandprofoundly impacted subsequent humanevolution. (1404-46)

The universes very first stars and galaxies werenot like the objects we see today.

Astronomers are reaching back in time to probehow the first objects in the universe came to be.

They are particularly interested in what causedthe so-called reionization of the universe, whenthe neutral hydrogen atoms pervading thecosmos were broken up by light.

Observations and computer simulations suggestthat the objects driving reionization could bemillionsolar-mass stars or the gaseous belchesof enormous black holes. (1404-38)

The Einstellung effect is the brain s tendency tostick with the most familiar solution to aproblem and stubbornly ignore alternatives.

Psychologists have known about this mentalphenomenon since the 1940s, but only now dothey have a solid understanding of how ithappens.

In recent eye-tracking experiments, familiarideas blinded chess players to areas of achessboard that would have provided clues tobetter solutions. (1403-74)

By mining the medical literature with textualanalysis software, the author found evidence ofwidespread plagiarism and potential fraud.

Now, he argues, the proliferation of dubiousjournals has made it easier to publishplagiarized work.

Textual analysis is a useful tool for detectingplagiarism.

But it may be time to consider a new model forscientific publishing perhaps one in whichresearchers continually edit a single Wikipediastyle electronic corpus. (1403-64)

Rocks recently retrieved along the northeasternedge of Hudson Bay in Canada may be theoldest ever found, but scientists are arguingwhether the age is 3.8 billion or 4.4 billionyears.

The older date would put the rocks close to thetime when Earth formed.

Resolving the debate depends on improvingmethods for dating atoms on small rocksamples formed from the primordial Earth.

If the rocks are 4.4 billion years old, they mayprovide strong clues about how Earth s surfacetook shape, when the oceans arose and howsoon after those events life began. (1403-58)

Theories of galaxy formation say that our MilkyWay should be surrounded by a spherical haloof small satellite galaxies.

Yet searches for these satellites have come upshort, leading some to question basic tenets ofcosmology. The satellites that astronomers havefound tend to align in a plane that cuts acrossthe Milky Way.

New simulations explain the lack of galaxiesand their alignment by appealing to a large webof dark matter. (1403-46)

The brain and the way it gives rise to consciousthought remains one of the great mysteries inall of science.

To better understand the brain, neuroscientistsneed new tools for analyzing the functioning ofneural circuits. Technologies that either recordor control the activity of brain circuits mayaddress these needs.

The Obama administration has a large scaleinitiative under way to promote development ofthese technologies. (1403-34)

What we think of as extremely unlikely eventsactually happen around us all the time.

The mathematical law of truly large numbers aswell as the law of combinations help to explainwhy.

With only 23 people in a room, the probabilitythat two of them share the same birthday is0.51 greater than 50 percent.

The Bulgarian lottery randomly selected thewinning numbers 4, 15, 23, 24, 35, 42 onSeptember 6, 2009.

Four days later it selected the same numbersagain.

The North Carolina Cash 5 lottery produced thesame winning numbers on July 9 and 11, 2007.Strange?

Not according to probability. (1402-72)

Mounting evidence indicates that the commonchicken is much smarter than it has been givencredit for.

The birds are cunning, devious and capable ofempathy.

And they have sophisticated communicationskills.

That chickens are so brainy hints that suchintelligence is more common in the animalkingdom than once thought.

This emerging picture of the chicken mind alsohas ethical implications for how society treatsfarmed birds. (1402-60)

Some 14 years ago an individual claiming topossess extraordinary recall of the distant pastcame forward.

Publicity about the case brought out hundredsof others who made similar assertions abouttheir ability to remember.

Testing confirmed that a few dozen among thisgroup can recite details of a specific datedecades later.

Neuroscientists are now exploring thebiological underpinnings of highly superiorautobiographical memory. (1402-40)

A new experiment to measure the proton radiushas found it to be much smaller than expected.

The difference suggests that physicists do notunderstand something important about eitherthe proton itself or the theory of quantumelectrodynamics until now the best tested andbest- understood theory in all of science.

With any luck, the anomaly could lead to afundamental revision of the laws of physics.(1402-32)

New research shows that video games havegreat educational potential.

A good game can exercise higher-orderskills evidence-based reasoning, problemsolving, collaboration in ways that traditionalpedagogy often does not.

But at the moment the hype exceeds the reality.

Game developers must work with educators andscientists to design games for inside and outside

the classroom that deliver educationalbenefits and that kids want to play. (1402-54)

Copernicus s revolutionary theory that Earthtravels around the sun upended more than amillenniums worth of scientific and religiouswisdom.

Most scientists refused to accept this theory formany decades even after Galileo made hisepochal observations with his telescope.

Their objections were not only theological.Observational evidence supported a competingcosmologythe geoheliocentrism of Tycho Brahe.(1401-72)

X-ray lasers have long been a staple of sciencefiction, but the first one employed for scientificuse began operation at Stanford University as aDepartment of Energy Office of Science facilityonly four years ago.

Known as the Linac Coherent Light Source(LCLS), it is powered by the worlds longestlinear particle accelerator at the SLAC NationalAccelerator Laboratory.

Exotic states of matter that occur nowhere elsein the universe have been created by subjectingatoms, molecules and solids to high-intensity x-

ray pulses.

Acting as a kind of strobe light, the laser hasfrozen the motion of atoms, captured high-speed images of proteins and viruses, andrecorded physical and chemical transformationsthat take less than a trillionth of a second.(1401-64)

The major global energy transitions from woodto coal to oil have each taken 50 to 60 years.

The current move to natural gas will also take along time.

There is no reason to believe that a change torenewable energy sources will be exceptionallyfast.

In rich countries, old renewables such ashydroelectricity are maxed out, so growth willhave to come from new renewables such aswind, solar and biofuels, which provided only3.35 percent of the U.S. supply in 2011.

But, the author argues, certain policies couldhasten the rise of renewables.

These include funding research into manytechnologies, ending unneeded subsidies,

making sure prices reflect the environmentaland health costs imposed by energy sources,and improving energy efficiency worldwide.(1401-52)

Astronomers are searching for rocky moons thatmay circle distant exoplanets.

Such exomoons could be a haven for life,provided that the moon is large enough to holdon to an atmosphere.

These moons might be detectable using existingdata sets, but their presence would impart sucha subtle signal to the data that massiveamounts of processing power would be requiredto find them. (1401-38)

Decision making often occurs without peoplegiving much conscious thought to how theyvote, what they buy, where they go on vacationor the way they negotiate a myriad of other lifechoices.

Unconscious processes underlie the way wedeliberate and plan our lives and for goodreason. Automatic judgments, for one, areessential for dodging an oncoming car or bus.

Behaviors governed by the unconscious gobeyond looking both ways at the corner.

Embedded attitudes below the level ofawareness shape many of our attitudes towardothers. Sigmund Freud meditated on themeaning of the unconscious throughout hiscareer.

These newer studies provide a more pragmaticperspective on how we relate to a boss orspouse. (1401-30)

development of these technologies.

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