Science & Tech

All Science & Tech

  • 21 moons ‘swarm’ planet Uranus

    In 1999 three new moons were discovered orbiting Uranus, a great gasball of a planet about 2 billion miles from Earth. The discovery raised the number of Uranian moons to…

  • New electronic tools reveal forgotten China

    German-born photographer Hedda Hammer Morrison (1908-1991) could often be seen bicycling through Peking with a Rolleiflex camera around her neck, capturing her times through her lens as both participant and…

  • ‘Ultracold’ trap unveils secrets of matter in the universe

    Physics Professor John Doyle traps the tiny particles that make up the universe and then studies them, looking for what they can tell him about the most basic rules of…

  • Exploring big and small possibilities of the information revolution

    ” ‘System-on-a-chip’ is the new buzzword today,” said Professor Woodward Yang in 1999. “It’s really not that far away.” As Yang sees it, the computer revolution is really just beginning.…

  • What killed the dinosaurs?

    Charles Marshall’s childhood passion led him to a career in paleontology, trying to understand the interplay between inheritance, environment, and catastrophe in directing evolution. Marshall’s work attracted media attention in…

  • Archaeology team helps find oldest deep-sea shipwrecks

    About 2,700 years ago, two Phoenician ships sank to the Mediterranean’s muddy bottom, where they lay upright, preserved in the relative stillness and tremendous pressure of the deep, dark waters.…

  • El Nino found to be 124,000 years old

    Records preserved in corals from Indonesia reveal that El Niño was causing severe weather even before the last ice age began, when the climate apparently was like it was for…

  • Student-designed lamp brightens Harvard dorms

    Halogen lamps became increasingly popular through the ’90s. Their high-wattage bulbs gave off a clear, pleasant light and — at $15 to $25 — even a student could afford them.…

  • Harvard students uncover Martha’s Vineyard history

    Some significant details emerged from the items uncovered by Harvard archaeology students at a dig on Martha’s Vineyard in 1999. For instance, the site has been used by humans much…

  • Discovering a new earthquake fault under Los Angeles

    “Los Angeles is caught in a vise,” says John Shaw, an associate professor of structural and economic geology at Harvard who was half of a research team that discovered a…

  • Physicists Slow Speed of Light

    Light, which normally travels the 240,000 miles from the Moon to Earth in less than two seconds, has been slowed to the speed of a minivan in rush-hour traffic —…

  • Saving plants that may save us

    One particular discovery highlights the importance of facilities like the Harvard Herbaria and Arnold Arboretum in storing and preserving the important information found in plants. An extract of a small…

  • Charles Schaff brings knack for finding fossils to field — and Harvard

    Charles Schaff ‘s official job description isn’t “fossil hunter.” He is a curatorial associate at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Schaff, however, makes regular trips to look for fossils in…