In 1978, Laila Williamson, an anthropologist of the American Museum of Natural History, summarized the data she had collected on the prevalence of infanticide among tribal and civilized societies from a variety of sources in the scientific and historical literature. Her conclusion was startlingly blunt:
Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunters and gatherers to high civilization, including our own ancestors. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule.
Science & Technology
WASHINGTON - Two NASA space probes that visited Mars 30 years ago may have stumbled upon alien microbes on the Red Planet and inadvertently killed them, a scientist theorizes in a paper released Sunday.
The problem was the Viking space probes of 1976-77 were looking for the wrong kind of life and didn't recognize it, the researcher said in a paper presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle.
The problem was the Viking space probes of 1976-77 were looking for the wrong kind of life and didn't recognize it, the researcher said in a paper presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle.
It wasn't all that long ago that black holes existed only in the realm of theory, a space- and mind-bending musing of Albert Einstein, who posited the existence of objects in the universe so dense that even light could not escape them. Even after scientists began to accept several decades ago that these extremely exotic and powerful objects were not the stuff of science fiction, they still knew virtually nothing about them.
One of the greatest mysteries of the universe is about to be unravelled with the first detailed, three-dimensional map of dark matter - the invisible material that makes up most of the cosmos.
Astronomers announced yesterday that they have achieved the apparently impossible task of creating a picture of something that has defied every attempt to detect it since its existence was first postulated in 1933.
Astronomers announced yesterday that they have achieved the apparently impossible task of creating a picture of something that has defied every attempt to detect it since its existence was first postulated in 1933.
The latest threat to the Net: autonomous software programs that combine forces to perpetrate mayhem, fraud, and espionage on a global scale. How one company fought the new Internet mafia - and lost.
Archaeologist Albert Goodyear is working on the find of his life.
Based on radiocarbon tests and artifacts he's found along the Savannah River in South Carolina, Goodyear believes that humans existed in North America as many as 50,000 years ago, shattering the long-held notion that the earliest settlers arrived here about 13,000 years ago in Alaska via a lost land bridge.
Based on radiocarbon tests and artifacts he's found along the Savannah River in South Carolina, Goodyear believes that humans existed in North America as many as 50,000 years ago, shattering the long-held notion that the earliest settlers arrived here about 13,000 years ago in Alaska via a lost land bridge.
A group of researchers working at the Human Genome Project indicate that they made an astonishing scientific discovery: They believe so-called 97% non-coding sequences in human DNA is no less than genetic code of extraterrestrial life forms.
From the moment they started to pull data from their machines, their findings produced fascinating information about one of the most conspicuous aspects of the British and Irish population: our redheads. Whether they are called carrot-tops, ginger-heads or "Titian blondes", these people are blessed - or cursed, according to some of them - with flaming locks that have been a feature of people for millenniums, from Boudicca to Prince Harry.
Beijing,-- A U.S. scientist has advanced a theory about life on Mars that has members of a National Research Council panel nicknamed the "weird life" committee nodding their heads -- slightly -- and may entice NASA to look in a different direction.
BEIJING, Jan. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- Astronomers have created the first three-dimensional map of the large-scale distribution of dark matter in the universe, according to the journal Nature on Monday.
Comment: Although this article claims that scientists have found ET's genes in our DNA, it offers no proof. It spends most of its time rehashing old stories.
Sala, the founder of the Expolitics Institute, was at one time associated with Eric Julien, well-known in France in certain circles for his hoaxes -- such as the Cosmic Spam message of several years ago.
It's articles like this that discredit any attempt to look at these questions critically, but with an open mind.