Neil deGrasse Tyson -- astrophysicist, irreverent tweeter, vanquisher of Pluto, frequent Stephen Colbert foil -- is America's "It" Nerd. A lot of people have held that title before, acting as evangelists for science and discovery. Ben Franklin. George Washington Carver. Stephen Jay Gould. Carl Sagan. So why Tyson is different?
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When men and women pitch the same idea to venture capitalists, men are awarded money more often. A new study found that appearance also factors into whether or not an idea will get funded.
Old records are breaking, cassette tapes are warping, even digital recordings can become obsolete. The Library of Congress is working to save millions of the nation's recordings before they're lost.
Scientists say the human nose can distinguish more than a trillion different smells. That new figure displaces a much more modest estimate. Until now, smell researchers have been saying the human nose can distinguish about 10,000 smells.
For the past decade, dinosaur scientists have been puzzling over a set of fossil bones they variously describe as weird and bizarre. Now they've figured out what animal they belonged to: a bird-like creature they're calling "the chicken from hell." There are two reasons for the name.
Clem Pryke, an experimental cosmologist at the University of Minnesota and one of the principal investigators on the team that discovered proof of cosmic inflation, joins us to discuss the research.
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For centuries, people have been attributing a vast array of health benefits to eating chocolate, from curing infertility and fatigue to fever and dental problems. But so far, the links to lower blood pressure and heart health have been the strongest -- and one of the few benefits to pass muster in the eyes of science.
Authorities believe that Flight 370's transponder was intentionally shut off, delaying search and rescue efforts and helping to conceal the plane's location -- a mystery unsolved more than 10 days after the Boeing 777 vanished.
Even on its own, finding new evidence for Albert Einstein's much-sought-after gravity waves is a major achievement. But finding evidence from the early universe means we have a new tool for exploring the most extreme, mind-blowing event that ever occurred: the birth of everything.
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