WE ARE already taking the first steps toward learning if there could be life on TRAPPIST-1’s newly discovered planets – and what that life might look like. Last week, a team led by MichaA l Gillon at Belgium’s University of Liege announced that TRAPPIST-1, a small, faint star some 40 light years away, has four more rocky planets to join the three we already knew about.
Category: Cornell University
New York school students help Cornell scientists to monitor invasive species in local waterways
Invasive aquatic species like round goby, Asian carp, and sea lamprey are a growing problem in New York State. Their presence impacts water quality, food supply, recreation and tourism, as well as human and animal health.
Upending the notion of the superiority of objective scientific truths over squishy artistic ones
‘The great enemy of thought and creativity is the received idea,” Siri Hustvedt writes, and woe to the lazy purveyor of unexamined “truths” who comes under her sharp scrutiny in this stimulating essay collection. It doesn’t matter who they are or what their credentials are; well-known sociobiologist E.O. Wilson and evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker, both Harvard professors, are among those whose glib certainties she coolly dismantles.