Cornell astronomers, observing what they call "the most boring, average galaxy" they could find, have discovered some unusual mechanics: counter-rotating stars in a spiral galaxy. About 80 percent of the stars in the galaxy NGC 4138 - mostly older stars - are rotating in a direction opposite to the younger stars and a huge cloud of hydrogen gas encircling the galaxy.
Cornell scientists are enlisting the help of schoolchildren to analyze tons of stuff that surrounded skeletons of the Chemung mastodons, the two extinct elephant-like creatures that died near the present-day Watkins Glen , N.Y.
Robert Rathbun Wilson, the experimental physicist who designed some of the world's most powerful particle accelerators used to study the fundamental nature of matter, died Jan. 16 at home in Ithaca.
Scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology are asking the public to help monitor the impact on native birds of invasive species, such as the house sparrow, by participating in a citizen-science project called The Birdhouse Network.
People across the continent can help make bird-watching history on February 20, 21, and 22 by participating in the first-ever BirdSource Great '98 Backyard Bird Count, cosponsored by the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society.
Rudyard Kipling, who famously wrote, "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet," obviously never met Lisa Nishii. Negotiating cultural differences is something she has had to do from birth. Now an assistant professor of human resource (HR) studies and international and comparative labor at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR), Nishii has a most unusual heritage: Her Japanese father is descended from Buddhist monks, while her mother traces her ancestry back to the original Mayflower settlers.
Instruments aboard a spacecraft that will be launched next year to explore two, and perhaps three or more, comets in the solar system will for the first time provide a "fingerprint" of the surface of cometary nuclei, giving the first firm evidence of the composition of the icy, rocky objects.
Cornell University Library is embarking on a three-year collaborative project with the National and University Library of Iceland to create the Icelandic National Digital Library.
In the snow-muffled quiet, there rings a reminder of a romance past - that of heiress Jennie McGraw, the chimes' first donor, and her scholarly though modest-of-means suitor and then husband, Cornell's first librarian, Willard Fiske.