Where Did the Hobbit Come From?
As paleontologists look more closely at the skeleton of Homo floresiensis, the species’ origin gets ever more mysterious
As paleontologists look more closely at the skeleton of Homo floresiensis, the species’ origin gets ever more mysterious
I turned 32 yesterday. As periods of time go, not that long—according to the actuarial tables of the Social Security Administration I’m just 41.6% through my life, which actually looks depressing when you write it out. But the world has undergone immense changes over those years—explosions, really—and that growth forms the …
From the beginning of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill—which has now resulted in at least 50 million gallons oil spewing into the ocean, if not far more—President Barack Obama has been in an awkward position. The energy giant BP is financially responsible for the spill, but it is also the only company that has the technology, expertise …
From the beginning of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, there have been questions over just how much crude really is bleeding out of BP’s well. The first figure—supplied by the company—was 1,000 barrels a day. The government later upped that to 5,000 barrels, a number that stood despite the skepticism of a raft of outside experts. …
Lithium—it’s not just my second-favorite song in the Nirvana catalog. The soft and silvery metal is the key ingredient in making the long-lived lithium-ion batteries needed to build workable electric cars. All the big electrics—the Tesla Roadster, the Nissan Leaf, the Chevrolet (yes, not Chevy) Volt—use lithium-ion batteries, as …
If there were ever a time and place for “so crazy it might just work” ideas, it’s the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. More than 50 days after the Deepwater Horizon exploded, the finest minds in the offshore oil industry are still trying to figure out a way to plug the leak for good. Even as the joint BP/government brain trust in Houston …
That’s the conclusion from a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Two Stanford researchers looked at the effects of the Green Revolution—the half-century old transition to more intensified agriculture, with more fertilizers and more irrigation—to see what impact the shift might have had on global …
Though you wouldn’t know it from the words chosen by angry American politicians—who can’t stop talking about the company’s Englishness—BP’s name doesn’t actually stand for British Petroleum anymore. The name was changed back in 2001, a few years after what was then British Petroleum—which in its early years had been the British …
While the Socratic exercise that is the House hearings on Big Oil go on—and on, and on—this afternoon, it’s not the only piece of energy and environmental news today. The Environmental Protection Agency released today its preliminary economic analysis of climate and energy bill co-sponsored by Senators John Kerry and Joseph …
Around 10:30 AM Eastern this morning, just as the five executives of the major global oil companies were settling in for what was set to be a brutal hearing from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, a fire broke out on BP’s Enterprise drilling ship, which is processing thousands of barrels a day of oil diverted from the Gulf of …