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Members of the Academy in 1667 with Louis XIV

Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the world. Modern science is typically divided into two or three major branches: the natural sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry, and biology), which study the physical world; and the behavioural sciences (e.g., economics, psychology, and sociology), which study individuals and societies. The formal sciences (e.g., logic, mathematics, and theoretical computer science), which study formal systems governed by axioms and rules, are sometimes described as being sciences as well; however, they are often regarded as a separate field because they rely on deductive reasoning instead of the scientific method or empirical evidence as their main methodology. Applied sciences are disciplines that use scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as engineering and medicine. (Full article...)

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Vital articles

  Vital articles to understand Science.

Helium atom ground state
Helium atom ground state
An illustration of the helium atom, depicting the nucleus (pink) and the electron cloud distribution (black). The nucleus (upper right) in helium-4 is in reality spherically symmetric and closely resembles the electron cloud, although for more complicated nuclei this is not always the case. The black bar is one angstrom (10−10 m or 100 pm).

Atoms are the basic particles of the chemical elements. An atom consists of a nucleus of protons and generally neutrons, surrounded by an electromagnetically bound swarm of electrons. The chemical elements are distinguished from each other by the number of protons that are in their atoms. For example, any atom that contains 11 protons is sodium, and any atom that contains 29 protons is copper. Atoms with the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons are called isotopes of the same element. (Full article...)

Did you know...

Did you know it about Science?

  • ... that public health measures and advances in medical science in modern human history helped raise global life expectancy from about 31 years in 1900 to over 66 years in 2000?
  • ... that fiction about journeys to the Moon has been written since at least the second century?
  • ... that the best novel of American science fiction author Garrett Smith did not appear as a stand-alone book until over 60 years after his death?
  • ... that Mary Clutter used her directorial position at the National Science Foundation to require scientific conferences to include women speakers when presenting research done by them?
  • ... that after Ursula K. Le Guin published her collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters, a reviewer called her the "ideal science fiction writer for readers who ordinarily dislike science fiction"?
  • ... that the documentary film I Am Human has been the conversation starter for neuroscience panel discussions at universities such as Harvard?

Get involved

For editor resources and to collaborate with other editors on improving Wikipedia's Science-related articles, visit WikiProject Science.
Science things you can do
Many naturally occurring phenomena approximate a normal distribution.
Many naturally occurring phenomena approximate a normal distribution.
  • Integrate relatively new scientific knowledge and findings (major studies reported on by RS) into relevant articles
  • Expand 2024 in science and/or other articles for science-related topics of the year (in the box on the right)
    • Create new articles for items of this article, mostly articles relating to new scientific fields/topics/findings (the page does not use redlinks anymore but you will quickly identify possible new articles when reading it; here you can find a version with over 60 redlinked examples)
    • Some of the lists' items have not yet been integrated into their wikilinked articles; if you add a study there it should also be relevant to at least one other article
    • Maybe this could be done as part of an organized effort
  • Find[how?] studies published under a compatible open license (like CC BY 4.0) and upload the studies' images with descriptions from the study and add these images to articles if they are relevant and useful there
    • When a study with a useful image is published under an incompatible or unclear license (or the image is published not in a study but elsewhere), you could contact its authors (Twitter/Mail) and ask them to give you the permission to upload them under CC BY 4.0 (or whether they could upload the image/s under a compatible license)
    • You can also think about whether images would be useful as you read a science-related article and then search for such images:
      • if they already exist add them (if already on WMCommons) or upload them (if the license is ok) or ask their authors for permissions
      • if they don't, you could create (or request) them

Science News

10 October 2024 –
In its annual Living Planet report, the World Wildlife Fund estimates that wild populations of animal species have decreased over 70% since 1970, with some high-biodiversity areas seeing up to 95% declines. (DW)
10 October 2024 – Tomb of Christopher Columbus
Researchers from the University of Granada confirm that bones lying in the Seville Cathedral in Seville, Andalusia, Spain, belonged to Christopher Columbus. (ABC Spain)
9 October 2024 – Nobel Prize in Chemistry
This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry is jointly awarded to British computer scientist Demis Hassabis and American chemist John M. Jumper for their work on protein structure prediction, and to American biochemist and computational biologist David Baker for his work on computational protein design. (The New York Times) (Nobel Prize)
8 October 2024 – Nobel Prize in Physics
American physicist John Hopfield and British-Canadian computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton are awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Physics "for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks". (The Guardian)
24 September 2024 –
Scientists from the University of Waterloo announce that they have positively identified bones found on King William Island in Nunavut, Canada, as those of James Fitzjames, captain of HMS Erebus during Franklin's lost expedition. (CBC News)
23 September 2024 – Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest
Climate researchers report that since 1985, deforestation in the Amazon has caused the loss of an area of rainforest equal to the combined area of France and Germany. (France 24)
This following Science-related articles is a most visited articles of WikiProject Science, See complete list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Science/Popular pages.

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