Science News: The Year We Thought We Saw Aliens

Scientists who created fake DNA evidence prove it’s possible to engineer a crime scene. Thanks to the X-Files and the movie Independence Day, 1996 was a banner year for reports of UFO sightings in Britain. From Scientific American’s fantastic Origins issue: the beginnings of the computer mouse. Biotech businessman and author Juan Enriquez asks, if energy is made from biological products then why can’t we grow new energy? Celebrating Hans Christian Ørsted, the scientist who championed “thought experiments,” which inspired Schrodinger to put a cat in a box. In the New Scientist, an interview with Stephen Fry about being an accidental environmentalist. How the science sausage is made: behind the scenes of getting published in a scientific journal. Thanks to the declining economy CO2 levels have decreased, but expect them to rise again as the recession slows. An interview with astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell on what aliens might realistically look like. 

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