On April 23 of this year the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Telescope detected, just as it was designed to do, a gamma-ray burst (GRB). Within less than a day two of the most powerful Earth-based telescopes had begun studying the quickly fading light of the...

Astronomers are beginning to learn significant details of the structure of galaxies in the early universe. And what they're learning is rather surprising: at least some early galaxies are almost as massive as otherwise similar galaxies in the present...

NGC 4945: The Milky Way’s not-so-distant Cousin (9/2/09) ESO has released a striking new image of a nearby galaxy that many astronomers think closely resembles our own Milky Way. Though the galaxy is seen edge-on, observations of NGC 4945 suggest...

Now that research into telomeres and telomerase has (finally) garnered a Nobel Prize, it's a good time to write about recent research on the subject. Seminal work on telomeres by Elizabeth Blackburn, one of the Nobel winners, was published way back in...

Inventor Demonstrates Humanoid Robot's Latest AI Abilities (8/25/09) In August 2007, Le Trung invented Aiko, a Yumecom, or "Dream Computer Robot." Although it took only a month and a half to build Aiko's exterior, the artificial intelligence software...