The cable holding a model of Foucault’s pendulum snapped last month at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris, sending the 60-pound ball crashing to the ground. It was permanently dented in the fall. Léon Foucault’s 1851 experiment remains a mesmerizing evidence that the Earth does, in fact, rotate. Scientists were aware of this, but the fact that the pendulum swings through many degrees of... 

Elderly people who care for a spouse who has dementia are at increased risk of developing dementia themselves, a study finds. The stress of attending to a mentally incapacitated spouse may somehow contribute to the added risk, scientists report in the May Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. sciencenewsPrevious studies have shown that chronic stress leads to increased levels of the hormone... 

The Environmental Protection Agency ordered British Petroleum to change the type of dispersant the company is using to keep oil from reaching American shores. The EPA gave the company 72 hours to switch to a less toxic chemical for use in breaking up oil slicks. Persistent questions about the toxicity of Corexit 9500 have plagued BP over the last several weeks. But the company continued to purchase... 

The flashes of white light accompanying some solar flares are caused by the sun’s acceleration of electrons to speeds greater than half the speed of light. The phenomenon’s new explanation derives from data recorded from a 2006 solar flare. The presence of high-energy X-rays in the same spot that scientists saw visible light tipped them off that some kind of non-thermal process was generating... 

Exoplanet orbits that seem just right for life could be bent out of shape by pushy neighbors. New simulations of extrasolar planetary systems may mean the definition of “habitable” planets needs to be completely overhauled. When astronomers talk about the “habitable zone,” they mean the shell around a star where the temperatures are right for liquid water. Any closer, and oceans will boil.... 

A new vaccine may be able to provide some protection against all strains of influenza. Current immunizations create antibodies that target a specific piece of a molecule on the surface of the virus that researchers call its “head.” That piece of the hemaglutinin protein evolves very quickly, which is why you have to get a different flu shot each year as new types of flu develop. The next-generation... 

Detailed Hubble images reveal a single supermassive black hole wandering away from its host galaxy’s center where it belongs. The misplaced black hole is probably the result of a merger between two smaller black holes, but could also have been pushed by a jet of matter extending from the galaxy’s core. Nearly every galaxy has a supermassive black hole — millions to billions of times more massive... 

Mysterious clouds of gas hovering above the plane of the Milky Way may be the fractured remnants of superbubbles blown by stellar winds and exploding stars. “There’s a fundamental, interesting connection between gas far away from the Milky Way and the amount of star formation below it in the galactic plane,” F. Jay Lockman of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory told Wired Science in a phone... 

As horror-flick titles go, Night of the Living Chaos and Rosemary’s Nonlinearity aren’t the catchiest. But filmmakers know that chaos — the mathematical kind — is scary. Now scientists know it too. sciencenewsFilmmakers use chaotic, unpredictable sounds to evoke particular emotions, say researchers who have assessed screams and other outbursts from more than 100 movies. The new findings, reported... 

In the popular imagination, the colossal squid is fast and terrifying, able to dispatch whales and submarines with ease. But the image of the squid as a nasty predator of the deep is probably more mythology than biology argue Rui Rosa of the Laboratorio Marıtimo da Guia in Lisbon and Brad Seibel of the University of Rhode Island in a new paper. These huge squid, which can weigh more than 1,100 pounds,... 

The wings were willing, but the feathers were weak. Delicate, thin-shafted plumage would have made flapping difficult if not impossible for two prehistoric birds, a new analysis of fossil feathers suggests. sciencenews Their feathers probably would have buckled or snapped during strong flapping or sharp maneuvers, so the primitive birds may have been limited to gliding, says Robert Nudds, an evolutionary... 

After a judge excluded brain scan evidence offered by the plaintiff, a jury quickly found for the defense in a Brooklyn sexual harassment case this week. The case, which drew national attention following a Wired.com article earlier this month, was one of the first times that fMRI brain scanning had been offered as evidence in court. David Zevin, the plaintiff’s lead attorney, had argued that his... 

After ravens see a friend get a beat down, they approach the victim and appear to console it, according to new research. Orlaith Fraser and her co-author Thomas Bugnyar watched the aftermath of 152 fights over a two year period between 13 hand-reared young adult ravens housed at the Konrad Lorenz Research Station in Austria. What they found was the first evidence for birds consoling one another. “It’s...