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For a topic outline of science, see Outline of science.

French Academy of Sciences

Science (from the Latin word scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

The earliest roots of science can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3500 to 3000 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 that consist of the natural sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, and physics), which study nature in the broadest sense; 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 abstract concepts. There is disagreement, however, on whether the formal sciences actually constitute a science as they do not rely on empirical evidence. Disciplines that use existing scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as engineering and medicine, are described as applied sciences.

Science is based on research, which is commonly conducted in academic and research institutions as well as in government agencies and companies. The practical impact of scientific research 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, and environmental protection.

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ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) is one of the five particle detector experiments (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, TOTEM, and LHCb) being constructed at the Large Hadron Collider, a new particle accelerator at CERN in Switzerland. It will be 45 metres long and 25 metres in diameter, and will weigh about 7,000 tonnes. The project involves roughly 2,000 scientists and engineers at 151 institutions in 34 countries. The construction was completed in 2008. The experiment is expected to measure phenomena that involve highly massive particles which were not measurable using earlier lower-energy accelerators and might shed light on new theories of particle physics beyond the Standard Model.

The ATLAS collaboration, the group of physicists building the detector, was formed in 1992 when the proposed EAGLE (Experiment for Accurate Gamma, Lepton and Energy Measurements) and ASCOT (Apparatus with Super COnducting Toroids) collaborations merged their efforts into building a single, general-purpose particle detector for the Large Hadron Collider. The design was a combination of those two previous designs, as well as the detector research and development that had been done for the Superconducting Supercollider.

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Craniometry is the technique of measuring the bones of the skull. Craniometry was once intensively practiced in anthropology and ethnology. Human skulls can be classified into three main categories based on cephalic index: dolichocephalic: long and thin; brachycephalic: short and broad; mesocephalic: intermediate length and breadth.

Selected biography

Isaac Newton, English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, inventor, philosopher and alchemist. A man of profound genius, he is widely regarded as the most influential scientist in history. He is associated with the scientific revolution and the advancement of heliocentrism. Among his scientific accomplishments, Newton wrote the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, wherein he described universal gravitation and, via his laws of motion, laid the groundwork for classical mechanics. With Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz he is credited for the development of differential calculus. Newton was the first to promulgate a set of natural laws that could govern both terrestrial motion and celestial motion, and is credited with providing mathematical substantiation for Kepler's laws of planetary motion, which he expanded by arguing that orbits (such as those of comets) could include all conic sections (such as the ellipse, hyperbola, and parabola).

Did you know...

• ...that Scientists and Engineers for America is an organization focused on promoting sound science in government, and backing political candidates who support science and its applications?
• ...that the 2004 Christmas Eve Snowstorm was the most significant snow event for South Texas since 1895?
• ...that Stanford professor Kate Lorig developed a peer-led chronic disease self management course which is the basis of the Expert Patient Programme of the British National Health Service?
• ...that walking fish can actually skip, crawl, slither, and even climb trees?
• ...that the Thanksgiving 1984 Nor'easter deposited a 197-foot Venezuelan freighter in the backyard of a Palm Beach, Florida socialite, where it remained for several months?

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