A new measuring technique used to determine the distances to a class of stars called “Red Clumps” in the Large Magellanic Cloud produced a much smaller distance than that found…
Astronomers have long known that a supermassive black hole, more than 2 million times more massive than our Sun, lies at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy some 27,000…
Marked by job insecurity, dependence on changing technology, and uncertain financing, the biotechnology industry is viewed by researchers as one of the best examples of the workplace of the future.…
In the 1990s, approximately 4 million soldiers and civilians were killed by small arms in the internecine conflicts of the developing world. More people, in other words, were killed in…
Harvard Medical School believes it has a cure for problems associated with finding accurate, up-to-date medical information: a comprehensive (1,288 pages), $40 medical guide tied to a Web site that…
Sunney Xie is one of the world’s leading researchers in molecular imaging and in single-molecule reactions. Xie’s has devised a way to use laser beams to see collections of protein…
Eric Mazur, Harvard College Professor and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics, and his students were studying what kinds of new chemistry can occur when lasers shine on metals, like…
Two large, unnatural disasters helped to create the impetus for the field of environmental health to grow in scope. But before there was a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and before…
In 1999 three new moons were discovered orbiting Uranus, a great gasball of a planet about 2 billion miles from Earth. The discovery raised the number of Uranian moons to…
German-born photographer Hedda Hammer Morrison (1908-1991) could often be seen bicycling through Peking with a Rolleiflex camera around her neck, capturing her times through her lens as both participant and…
Physics Professor John Doyle traps the tiny particles that make up the universe and then studies them, looking for what they can tell him about the most basic rules of…
” ‘System-on-a-chip’ is the new buzzword today,” said Professor Woodward Yang in 1999. “It’s really not that far away.” As Yang sees it, the computer revolution is really just beginning.…
Charles Marshall’s childhood passion led him to a career in paleontology, trying to understand the interplay between inheritance, environment, and catastrophe in directing evolution. Marshall’s work attracted media attention in…
About 2,700 years ago, two Phoenician ships sank to the Mediterranean’s muddy bottom, where they lay upright, preserved in the relative stillness and tremendous pressure of the deep, dark waters.…
Records preserved in corals from Indonesia reveal that El Niño was causing severe weather even before the last ice age began, when the climate apparently was like it was for…
Halogen lamps became increasingly popular through the ’90s. Their high-wattage bulbs gave off a clear, pleasant light and — at $15 to $25 — even a student could afford them.…
Some significant details emerged from the items uncovered by Harvard archaeology students at a dig on Martha’s Vineyard in 1999. For instance, the site has been used by humans much…
“Los Angeles is caught in a vise,” says John Shaw, an associate professor of structural and economic geology at Harvard who was half of a research team that discovered a…
Light, which normally travels the 240,000 miles from the Moon to Earth in less than two seconds, has been slowed to the speed of a minivan in rush-hour traffic —…
One particular discovery highlights the importance of facilities like the Harvard Herbaria and Arnold Arboretum in storing and preserving the important information found in plants. An extract of a small…
Charles Schaff ‘s official job description isn’t “fossil hunter.” He is a curatorial associate at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Schaff, however, makes regular trips to look for fossils in…
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