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Portal:Science

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Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

The earliest roots in the history of science can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age.

The recovery and assimilation of Greek works and Islamic inquiries into Western Europe from the 10th to 13th century revived "natural philosophy", which was later transformed by the Scientific Revolution that began in the 16th century as new ideas and discoveries departed from previous Greek conceptions and traditions. The scientific method soon played a greater role in knowledge creation and it was not until the 19th century that many of the institutional and professional features of science began to take shape; along with the changing of "natural philosophy" to "natural science".

Modern science is typically divided into three major branches: natural sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, and physics), which study the physical world; the social sciences (e.g., economics, psychology, and sociology), which study individuals and societies; and the formal sciences (e.g., logic, mathematics, and theoretical computer science), which study formal systems, governed by axioms and rules. There is disagreement whether the formal sciences are science disciplines, because they do not rely on empirical evidence. Applied sciences are disciplines that use scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as in engineering and medicine.

New knowledge in science is advanced by research from scientists who are motivated by curiosity about the world and a desire to solve problems. Contemporary scientific research is highly collaborative and is usually done by teams in academic and research institutions, government agencies, and companies. The practical impact of their work has led to the emergence of science policies that seek to influence the scientific enterprise by prioritizing the development of commercial products, armaments, health care, public infrastructure, and environmental protection. (Full article...)

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The cloud pattern on Jupiter is the visible system of colored cloud tops in the atmosphere of the planet Jupiter, remarkable for its stability. Astronomers have given names to parts of this pattern, using the word zone for the light stripes and belt for the dark stripes along various latitudes. The pattern and intensity of its belts and zones are famously variable, often changing markedly from one opposition to the next. The normal pattern of bands and zones is sometimes disrupted for a period of time, in events that astronomers call "disturbances". The longest-lived disturbance in recorded history was a "Southern Tropical Disturbance" (STropD) from 1901 until 1939, discovered by Percy B. Molesworth on February 28, 1901. It created a darkened feature over a range of longitudes in the normally bright Southern Tropical zone.

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Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler (April 15, 1707 Basel, Switzerland – September 18, 1783 St Petersburg, Russia) was a Swiss mathematician and physicist. He is considered to be the dominant mathematician of the 18th century and one of the greatest mathematicians of all time; he is certainly among the most prolific, with collected works filling over 70 volumes. Euler developed many important concepts and proved numerous lasting theorems in diverse areas of mathematics, including calculus, number theory, and topology. In the course of this work, he introduced much of modern mathematical terminology, defining the concept of a function, and its notation, such as sin, cos, and tan for the trigonometric functions.

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Science News

23 June 2022 –
Scientists discover the largest known bacterium, Thiomargarita magnifica, in the mangroves of the Guadeloupe archipelago in Lesser Antilles. It is up to 2 cm (3/4 inch) long. (France 24)
21 June 2022 –
Nuri, South Korea's first locally-developed orbital launch vehicle, launches for a second time from the Naro Space Center in Goheung County, South Jeolla, with a satellite payload of 1,500 kg (3,300 lb). The launch was successful, with all of the satellites being put onto the 700 km (430 mi) Sun-synchronous orbit. (Philippine Daily Inquirer)
1 June 2022 –
Scientists from the University of Western Australia announce that a seagrass meadow of the species Posidonia australis covering 200 square kilometres (77 sq mi), approximately three times the size of Manhattan, found off of Western Australia's Shark Bay, actually belongs to one plant, making it the largest known plant on Earth. (BBC News)
12 May 2022 –
A team of scientists at the Event Horizon Telescope release the first ever image of [[Sagittarius A;12 May 2022 –
]], the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. (BBC News)
Researchers from the University of Florida announce that plants have been grown on lunar soil, collected by Apollo missions, for the first time ever. (AP)
16 April 2022 – Chinese space program
Chinese astronauts Ye Guangfu, Wang Yaping and Zhai Zhigang of the Shenzhou 13 spacecraft land successfully in Inner Mongolia after spending 183 days in space. During the spaceflight, Wang Yaping became the first Chinese woman to perform a spacewalk. (Al Jazeera)

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