Tag: Science
Can you judge a book by its odour?
Cocoa, wood, rusks every book has a distinctive smell. And each smell says something about how and when it was made, and where it has been. What does it mean to experience a book? To a bibliophile such as Alberto Manguel, smell plays an important part. In a talk at the British Library this week, […]
Vera Rubin obituary
Astronomer who found evidence of the existence of dark matter and became an inspiration for women in science. Vera Rubin once tweeted: “Dont let anyone tell you that you aren’t good enough. My science teacher once told me I wasn’t good enough for science and look at me now.” In the 1970s and early 80s […]
Will scientists ever prove the existence of dark matter?
Astronomers in the US are setting up an experiment which, if it fails as others have could mark the end of a 30-year-old theory. Deep underground, in a defunct gold mine in South Dakota, scientists are assembling an array of odd devices: a chamber for holding tonnes of xenon gas; hundreds of light detectors, each […]
First edition of Isaac Newton’s Principia set to fetch $1m at auction
Rare European copy of key mathematics text is going under hammer at Christies in New York with record guide price. A first edition of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica could become the most expensive print sold of the revolutionary text when it goes under the hammer with a guide price of at least $1m (790,000) […]
Kazuo Ishiguro: ‘Were coming close to the point where we can create people who are superior to others’
Social changes unleashed by new technologies could undermine core human values unless we engage with science, warns author. Imagine a two-tiered society with elite citizens, genetically engineered to be smarter, healthier and to live longer, and an underclass of biologically run-of-the-mill humans. It sounds like the plot of a dystopian novel, but the world could […]