Fruit flies have free will. Even when deprived of any sensory input to react to, the zigs and zags of their flight reveal an intrinsic, non-random - yet still unpredictable - decision-making capacity.
If evolution has furnished humans with a similar capacity, this could help resolve one of the long-standing puzzles of philosophy.
Science assumes that effects have causes, and that if we understand the causes well enough we can predict the effects. But if so, our experience of being free to make choices is an illusion, since we are in effect just sophisticated robots responding to stimuli. If our behaviour is unpredictable, this is only because random events prevent us from responding perfectly to our environment.
Science & Technology
After 2½ months of repairs to its external fuel tank, space shuttle Atlantis returned to the launch pad Tuesday in anticipation of lifting off in early June on a construction mission to the international space station.
The 5.45-kilometre trip from the Vehicle Assembly Building aboard the massive crawler-transporter started just after 5 a.m. EDT and ended about noon.
It was the second trip to the launch pad that Atlantis has made this year. The shuttle was at the launch pad in late February when a freak hail storm shot hail the size of golf balls at the shuttle, making thousands of dings to insulation foam on the external fuel tank.
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| ©John Raoux/AP |
| The space shuttle Atlantis moves toward launch pad 39a at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Tuesday. |
The 5.45-kilometre trip from the Vehicle Assembly Building aboard the massive crawler-transporter started just after 5 a.m. EDT and ended about noon.
It was the second trip to the launch pad that Atlantis has made this year. The shuttle was at the launch pad in late February when a freak hail storm shot hail the size of golf balls at the shuttle, making thousands of dings to insulation foam on the external fuel tank.
Move over Mr Jack Thompson, Louisiana State Representative Roy Burrell has upped the ante when it comes to mixing fact and fiction to make political capital.
In a column in The Shreveport Times (which Burrell likes to refer to as The Times) he speaks about U.S. federal judge, James Brady, over-turning Burrell's Jack Thompson-supported state law (HB 1381). The law would have enabled judges to rule on whether a video game was too violent to sell to children. HB 1381 was made law in Louisiana in June 2006, and over-turned as unconstitutional in November the same year.
In a column in The Shreveport Times (which Burrell likes to refer to as The Times) he speaks about U.S. federal judge, James Brady, over-turning Burrell's Jack Thompson-supported state law (HB 1381). The law would have enabled judges to rule on whether a video game was too violent to sell to children. HB 1381 was made law in Louisiana in June 2006, and over-turned as unconstitutional in November the same year.
Our solar system might get booted from the suburbs to the boondocks of our galaxy when the Milky Way merges with its neighbor Andromeda in a few billion years, scientists say.
New calculations by T.J. Cox and Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics show there is a small possibility that the Sun and its planets will be exiled to the outer reaches of the merged galaxy.
"You could say that we're being sent to a retirement home in the country," Cox said.
Their findings have been submitted for publication to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
New calculations by T.J. Cox and Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics show there is a small possibility that the Sun and its planets will be exiled to the outer reaches of the merged galaxy.
"You could say that we're being sent to a retirement home in the country," Cox said.
Their findings have been submitted for publication to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
In the eye of a furious hurricane, the weather is often quite calm and sunny. But new NASA research is providing clues about how the seemingly subtle movement of air within and around this region provides energy to keep this central "powerhouse" functioning.
Using computer simulations and observations of 1998's Hurricane Bonnie in southern North Carolina, scientists were able to get a detailed view of pockets of swirling, warm humid air moving from the eye of the storm to the ring of strong thunderstorms in the eyewall that contributed to the intensification of the hurricane.
The findings suggest that the flow of air parcels between the eye and eye wall - largely believed trivial in the past - is a key element in hurricane intensity and that there's more to consider than just the classic "in-up-and-out" flow pattern. The classic pattern says as air parcels flow "in" to the hurricane's circulation, they rise "up," form precipitating clouds and transport warm air to the upper atmosphere before moving "out" into surrounding environmental air.
"Our results improve understanding of the mechanisms that play significant roles in hurricane intensity," said Scott Braun, research meteorologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "The spinning flow of air parcels - or vortices - in the eye can carry very warm, moist eye air into the eyewall that acts as a turbocharger for the hurricane heat engine." The research appears in the June 2007 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.
Using computer simulations and observations of 1998's Hurricane Bonnie in southern North Carolina, scientists were able to get a detailed view of pockets of swirling, warm humid air moving from the eye of the storm to the ring of strong thunderstorms in the eyewall that contributed to the intensification of the hurricane.
The findings suggest that the flow of air parcels between the eye and eye wall - largely believed trivial in the past - is a key element in hurricane intensity and that there's more to consider than just the classic "in-up-and-out" flow pattern. The classic pattern says as air parcels flow "in" to the hurricane's circulation, they rise "up," form precipitating clouds and transport warm air to the upper atmosphere before moving "out" into surrounding environmental air.
"Our results improve understanding of the mechanisms that play significant roles in hurricane intensity," said Scott Braun, research meteorologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "The spinning flow of air parcels - or vortices - in the eye can carry very warm, moist eye air into the eyewall that acts as a turbocharger for the hurricane heat engine." The research appears in the June 2007 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.
Smack bang in the middle of Antarctica sits a mysterious mountain range. Its jagged peaks cover an area similar to that of the Alps, and its highest point is around 3500 metres above sea level. Yet by rights these mountains shouldn't exist at all.
The space shuttle and its newly repaired hail-damaged fuel tank are ready to return to the launch pad for an 8 June launch, NASA managers said on Friday, even though the tank is a bit of an eyesore.
The Taoist poet Lao Tse famously wrote that water exemplifies the highest good, benefiting all and flowing easily without effort. While this makes for a lovely metaphor, there's more to H20 than is dreamt of in Lao Tse's philosophies.
Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have found that, at the molecular level, water exhibits viscous, even solid-like properties.
When molecules of water are forced to move through a small gap between two solid surfaces, the substance's viscosity increases by a factor of 1,000 to 10,000, approaching that of molasses.
Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have found that, at the molecular level, water exhibits viscous, even solid-like properties.
When molecules of water are forced to move through a small gap between two solid surfaces, the substance's viscosity increases by a factor of 1,000 to 10,000, approaching that of molasses.
The weather in space is controlled by events at the centre of the Earth. A pity, then, that the magnetic field generated there may be about to go into reverse
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| ©Unk |
The moon is waning. The morning stars are Mars, Neptune, Uranus and Jupiter. The evening stars are Venus, Mercury and Saturn.
Those born on this date are under the sign of Taurus. They include English portrait painter Thomas Gainsborough in 1727; Scottish reformer Robert Owen in 1771; opera coloratura soprano Patrice Munsel in 1925 (age 82); singer Bobby Darin in 1936; filmmakers George Lucas ('Star Wars') in 1944 (age 63) and Robert Zemeckis ('Forrest Gump') in 1952 (age 55); and actor Tim Roth in 1961 (age 46).
Those born on this date are under the sign of Taurus. They include English portrait painter Thomas Gainsborough in 1727; Scottish reformer Robert Owen in 1771; opera coloratura soprano Patrice Munsel in 1925 (age 82); singer Bobby Darin in 1936; filmmakers George Lucas ('Star Wars') in 1944 (age 63) and Robert Zemeckis ('Forrest Gump') in 1952 (age 55); and actor Tim Roth in 1961 (age 46).
