When UC Santa Barbara geology professor emeritus James Kennett and colleagues set out years ago to examine signs of a major cosmic impact that occurred toward the end of the Pleistocene epoch, little did they know just how ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 13, 2019
8
1479
Betelgeuse has been the center of significant media attention lately. The red supergiant is nearing the end of its life, and when a star over 10 times the mass of the Sun dies, it goes out in spectacular fashion. With its ...
Astronomy
Feb 28, 2020
36
1947
Agriculture in Syria started with a bang 12,800 years ago as a fragmented comet slammed into the Earth's atmosphere. The explosion and subsequent environmental changes forced hunter-gatherers in the prehistoric settlement ...
Archaeology
Oct 4, 2023
2
997
Water is an ephemeral thing. It can emerge from an isolated spring, as if by magic, to birth a babbling brook. It can also course through a mighty river, seeping into the soil until all that remains downstream is a shady ...
Environment
Mar 17, 2021
1
2629
About 12,800 years ago when the Earth was warming and emerging from the last ice age, a dramatic and anomalous event occurred that abruptly reversed climatic conditions back to near-glacial state. According to James Kennett, ...
Earth Sciences
May 21, 2013
56
6
Most of North America's megafauna—mastodons, short-faced bears, giant ground sloths, saber-toothed cats and American camels and horses—disappeared close to 13,000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene period. The cause ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 27, 2014
11
1
A new paradigm in quantum information processing has been demonstrated by physicists at UC Santa Barbara. Their results are published in this week's issue of Science Express online.
Quantum Physics
Sep 1, 2011
8
1
News headlines this summer paint a gloomy picture of conflict across the globe. These stories suggest that group differences—whether religious, ethnic, or political—seem to divide rather than unite us. Taking a broader ...
Social Sciences
Aug 4, 2016
11
1497
What kinds of 'particles' are allowed by nature? The answer lies in the theory of quantum mechanics, which describes the microscopic world.
Quantum Physics
Nov 6, 2017
15
1037
You've probably seen them, perhaps on long roadtrips: wind turbines with enormous, hypnotic rolling blades, harnessing the clean power of wind for conversion into electric energy. What you may not know is that for the explosion ...
Soft Matter
Oct 4, 2018
13
990
