science

TED, the esteemed nonprofit organization and popular video-driven Web site, has brought its TED Talks to Android devices. With the official TED app, you can now browse and watch more than 1,000 TED Talks from the organization's popular TED Conferences while on the go.

If you're not familiar with TED, it's a nonprofit organization devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading." While it may sound a bit hokey, TED produces annual conferences featuring some of the most brilliant speakers from around the world. These speakers often cover topics like technology, entertainment, design, science, and social justice. … Read more

In these Facebook days, our obsession with what others think of us can only increase.

We want them to want us. We want them to love us. We want them to love themselves for loving us.

Which leads us to wondering what aliens might think of us. Stephen Hawking, for his part, worried that they might actually hate us with a fervor last experienced when Mike Tyson espied Evander Holyfield's ear.

However, the experts on a two-part Science Channel series called "Alien Encounters" speculate with a rather more positive spirit.

I am grateful to The New York Times … Read more

Pi Day is on its way and it's time to let that geek flag fly.

If you don't spend a lot of time in the nerd-o-sphere (pun totally intended), you may not realize that March 14 (3/14) is a beloved day to the mathematically aware.

I shouldn't have to tell CNET readers, but pi is a mathematical constant--the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. The actual ratio is fairly close to 22/7--though pi to 12 places is 3.141592653589, not 3.142857142857--and comes in handy for calculating the area of a circle and other activities that even the nerdiest of writers like myself try to avoid on a daily basis.

My colleague Gina Smith, a contributor to CNET sister site TechRepublic, has a little less shame about her love for pi. She posted a long list of her favorite pi facts acquired over the years at aNewDomain (disclosure: I am a contributing editor for that site). Here are a few of my favorites:… Read more

For the blind and visually impaired, it can be nearly impossible to follow along when a math teacher spends most of a lecture in front of a blackboard or projector drawing shapes, parabolas, X-Y planes, and other visuals.

It's about time there's an app for that, thought mechanical engineering grad student Jenna Gorlewicz, who'd spent a few years at Vanderbilt's Medical and Electromechanical Design Laboratory miniaturizing endoscopic robotic capsules and was looking for a more people-oriented project.

So Gorlewicz, who says she loves both teaching and math, set out 18 months ago to try to develop a tablet app that uses haptic (or tactile) technology to help the visually impaired learn math and other subjects with a strong visual component.… Read more

Some people think of scientists as quiet people in white coats secreted away in labs, rarely seeing the light of day. I know better than that.

As the daughter of a chemistry prof, I'm well aware of the humorous side of science, with its jokes about atoms, geology innuendos, and mathematics puns. Fake Science is where Nobel laureates go for an online laugh. … Read more

A computer monitor and keyboard are so yesteryear.

At Microsoft's annual TechForum expo earlier this week, the company showed off several amazing concept products that will have you thinking far into the future. Luckily, we have some great pictures and videos of some of these devices, which deliver a computer experience unlike anything commercially available today.

Buckle up and click on our gallery below to see innovations including a 3D augmented-reality desktop, software that tracks the history of the world, a mirror with holograms, and much more. … Read more

The way we use computers now looks very antiquated compared with a new interactive see-through OLED display from Microsoft Applied Sciences.

Jinha Lee, an MIT Media Lab Ph.D. student and a research intern at Microsoft, worked with Cati Boulanger (a researcher at the company) on a new type of computer that seems like a stepping stone to something much greater. Lee describes the see-through 3D desktop in greater detail on his personal blog. … Read more

A mere 60 light-years away, orbiting an orangish star called HD 189733, is a world an Earthling would not want to visit. The planet is a gas giant, like Jupiter or Saturn, but unlike those familiar worlds this one hugs tightly to its host star, orbiting at about one thirtieth the distance at which Earth circles the sun. The exoplanet, labeled HD 189733 b by astronomical convention, stays mighty toasty under its astronomical broiler, with temperatures upward of 900 degrees Celsius.

Thanks to a new study, any hypothetical unfortunates forced to visit HD 189733 b will know which part of … Read more

Earth started as a violent place, its surface churned by continuous volcanic eruptions and cloaked in an atmosphere that would have been poisonous to today's life-forms. Furthermore, the thin primeval atmosphere may have provided only scant protection from the young sun's harsh ultraviolet glare. Given these inhospitable conditions, scientists have long wondered: How did the first cells come to be nearly 4 billion years ago?

Conventional scientific wisdom holds that life arose in the sea. But a new study suggests that the first cells--or at least the ones that left descendants still extant--got their start in geothermal pools, … Read more