The surface of the sun is roiled by sunspots and massive flares, but astronomers were surprised to see the latest anomaly: Large waves, probably 100 meters high, travel along the surface of the sun, researchers report in the 31 May issue of Nature.
Common sense says you can't keep an atom's nucleus from decaying simply by looking at it. Quantum mechanics says you can. Now two Israeli physicists have come up with a way in which watching a nucleus might make it decay faster.
From the ceiling of New York City's Grand Central Station to backsides of disposable diapers, images of stars and other heavenly objects surround us. Unfortunately, popular depictions of the cosmos often part company with reality.
In the 8 months since a teenager died in a gene therapy experiment at the University of Pennsylvania, clinical researchers have been on tenterhooks to learn the consequences for Penn--and for national policy. Last week, they began to find out.