Scientific Method / Science & Exploration

Week in science: holographic displays and confused typists abound

Ars recaps the biggest stories from the world of science from the past week.

Billion-year-old hot springs on Mars? Check. Holograms over ethernet? Check. Women feeling pain differently than men? We covered that too. These are the biggest stories from the past week in science.

Women don't sense pain in the same way men do : Receptors in the spinal cord that influence pain perception act differently in men and women, which may make them more or less sensitive to pain.

Holograms meet ethernet in new display technology: Researchers have created a telepresence system that displays its output as a hologram. Unfortunately, the refresh rate needs a bit of work: one frame every two seconds isn't quite the same as being there.

Extra neutrino flavor could be bitter end to Standard Model: Muon antineutrinos seem to oscillate into electron antineutrinos at a higher rate than predicted. This suggests the Standard Model is wrong, but leaves us little closer to knowing what's right.

Cheap and cheerful gravity wave detector on the horizon: We've been looking for gravity waves predicted by the general theory of relativity for some time without much luck. Researchers are proposing a detector that has the potential to be much cheaper and a lot smaller, but still very sensitive.

Atlantic Ocean flow reversed 10,000 years ago, slowing down again: Analysis of protactinium and thorium in ocean sediment shows that, 24,000 years ago, the currents of the Atlantic ocean flowed in the opposite orientation it does now.

Getting to QED, Part 1: Informal logic and online argumentation: Flaming, trolling, ad hominem, logical fallacies, Godwin violations—it's all the stuff of too many online discussions. In Part 1 of this four-part series, logician and Cornell professor Walker White shows you how to spot the difference between productive and unproductive debates, using the tools of informal logic.

Universal gripper bests robotic hands in adaptability: Researchers have developed a universal gripper using a bag of granular material that can grab objects of any shape, giving it an edge over human hand imitators.

The galaxy (probably) abounds in Earth-like planets: A new telescope survey suggests that as many as a quarter of the Sun-like stars out there may harbor an Earth analog.

A trip through the peer review sausage grinder: Peer review is a scientific institution, used not only to evaluate the products of scientific research, but also to decide which research projects are worth funding. Ars explores the differences between the two processes and how it works much better for scrutinizing scientific results.

Life on Mars could have soaked in 3 billion year-old hot springs: The first Martian tourist won't be soaking in them, since they probably shut down billions of years ago, but volcanic hot springs on the red planet may be able to preserve signs of any microbial life that was present.

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3 Reader Comments

  1. Looks like you forgot to insert the story on the two level error correction in typists that the headline implies should be here.
    997 posts | registered
  2. Confused typist... no typist story.

    .. clever.
    58 posts | registered
  3. Yes, these comments will soon be filled with confused typists.

    To fix this, until they correct the article, here's the link: ... -brain.ars
    1656 posts | registered

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