What exactly does 'instantaneous' mean?

How short is an "instant"? Is it a second? A tenth of a second? A microsecond? You might think all of these qualify. What about 100 years? That certainly doesn't seem like an instant, and to a human being, it isn't, since ...

Something old, something new... Grand Canyon surprises

The Grand Canyon as we know it was formed between five and six million years ago, which is youthful in geological terms, but parts of it could be as old as 70 million years, scientists said Sunday.

Antarctic team digs deep to predict climate future

Nancy Bertler and her team took a freezer to the coldest place on Earth, endured weeks of primitive living and risked spending the winter in Antarctic darkness, to go get ice—ice that records our climate's past and could ...