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86-459: Reversal occurrences are statistically random. There have been at least 183 reversals over the last 83 million years (on average once every ~450,000 years). The latest, the Brunhes–Matuyama reversal , occurred 780,000 years ago with widely varying estimates of how quickly it happened. Other sources estimate that the time that it takes for a reversal to complete is on average around 7,000 years for

172-483: A Geomagnetic Polarity Time Scale . The current time scale contains 184 polarity intervals in the last 83   million years (and therefore 183 reversals). The rate of reversals in the Earth's magnetic field has varied widely over time. Around 72 Ma , the field reversed 5 times in a million years. In a 4-million-year period centered on 54 Ma , there were 10 reversals; at around 42 Ma , 17 reversals took place in

258-556: A Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for research initially rejected by Nature and published only after Lauterbur appealed against the rejection, Nature acknowledged more of its own missteps in rejecting papers in an editorial titled, "Coping with Peer Rejection": [T]here are unarguable faux pas in our history. These include the rejection of Cherenkov radiation , Hideki Yukawa 's meson , work on photosynthesis by Johann Deisenhofer , Robert Huber and Hartmut Michel , and

344-499: A gamma process . In 2006, a team of physicists at the University of Calabria found that the reversals also conform to a Lévy distribution , which describes stochastic processes with long-ranging correlations between events in time. The data are also consistent with a deterministic, but chaotic, process. Most estimates for the duration of a polarity transition are between 1,000 and 10,000 years, but some estimates are as quick as

430-550: A natural history magazine and progressed to include more physical observational science and technical subjects and less natural history. The journal's name changed from its original title to Intellectual Observer: A Review of Natural History, Microscopic Research, and Recreative Science and then to the Student and Intellectual Observer of Science, Literature, and Art . While Recreative Science had attempted to include more physical sciences such as astronomy and archaeology ,

516-410: A brief complete reversal 41,000 years ago , which led to the magnetic field strength dropping to an estimated 5% of normal during the reversal. There is evidence that this occurs both during secular variation and during reversals. A hypothesis by McCormac and Evans assumes that the Earth's field disappears entirely during reversals. They argue that the atmosphere of Mars may have been eroded away by

602-617: A consequence, the majority of submitted papers are rejected without review. According to Nature ' s original mission statement : It is intended, FIRST, to place before the general public the grand results of Scientific Work and Scientific Discovery; and to urge the claims of Science to a more general recognition in Education and in Daily Life; and, SECONDLY, to aid Scientific men themselves, by giving early information of all advances made in any branch of Natural knowledge throughout

688-419: A constant reversal rate, so it is common to use a non-stationary Poisson process. However, compared to a Poisson process, there is a reduced probability of reversal for tens of thousands of years after a reversal. This could be due to an inhibition in the underlying mechanism, or it could just mean that some shorter polarity intervals have been missed. A random reversal pattern with inhibition can be represented by

774-464: A human lifetime. During a transition, the magnetic field will not vanish completely, but many poles might form chaotically in different places during reversal, until it stabilizes again. Studies of 16.7-million-year-old lava flows on Steens Mountain , Oregon, indicate that the Earth's magnetic field is capable of shifting at a rate of up to 6 degrees per day. This was initially met with skepticism from paleomagnetists. Even if changes occur that quickly in

860-465: A line by William Wordsworth : "To the solid ground of nature trusts the Mind that builds for aye". First owned and published by Alexander Macmillan , Nature was similar to its predecessors in its attempt to "provide cultivated readers with an accessible forum for reading about advances in scientific knowledge." Janet Browne has proposed that "far more than any other science journal of the period, Nature

946-666: A measure of how many citations a journal generates in other works, was 42.778 in 2019 (as measured by Thomson ISI ). However, as with many journals, most papers receive far fewer citations than the impact factor would indicate. Nature 's journal impact factor carries a long tail. Studies of methodological quality and reliability have found that some high-prestige journals including Nature "publish significantly substandard structures", and overall "reliability of published research works in several fields may be decreasing with increasing journal rank". As with most other professional scientific journals, papers undergo an initial screening by

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1032-502: A polarity interval when the rest of that polarity interval was simply eroded away. Statistical analysis shows no evidence for a correlation between reversals and extinctions. Most proposals tying reversals to extinction events assume that the Earth's magnetic field would be much weaker during reversals. Possibly the first such hypothesis was that high-energy particles trapped in the Van Allen radiation belt could be liberated and bombard

1118-455: A reversal lasting only 200 years. A 2019 paper estimates that the most recent reversal, 780,000 years ago, lasted 22,000 years. The magnetic field of the Earth, and of other planets that have magnetic fields, is generated by dynamo action in which convection of molten iron in the planetary core generates electric currents which in turn give rise to magnetic fields. In simulations of planetary dynamos, reversals often emerge spontaneously from

1204-409: A reversal, whereas reversals on Earth seem to occur during periods of low field strength. Some scientists, such as Richard A. Muller , think that geomagnetic reversals are not spontaneous processes but rather are triggered by external events that directly disrupt the flow in the Earth's core. Proposals include impact events or internal events such as the arrival of continental slabs carried down into

1290-462: A simple explanation by combining the seafloor spreading theory of Harry Hess with the known time scale of reversals: sea floor rock is magnetized in the direction of the field when it is formed. Thus, sea floor spreading from a central ridge will produce pairs of magnetic stripes parallel to the ridge. Canadian L. W. Morley independently proposed a similar explanation in January 1963, but his work

1376-419: A theory which, during the latter half of the 19th century, received a great deal of criticism among more conservative groups of scientists. Perhaps it was in part its scientific liberality that made Nature a longer-lasting success than its predecessors. John Maddox , editor of Nature from 1966 to 1973 and from 1980 to 1995, suggested at a celebratory dinner for the journal's centennial edition that perhaps it

1462-535: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Nature (journal) Nature is a British weekly scientific journal founded and based in London , England. As a multidisciplinary publication, Nature features peer-reviewed research from a variety of academic disciplines, mainly in science and technology. It has core editorial offices across the United States, continental Europe, and Asia under

1548-499: Is a highly speculative theory that connects this reversal event to the large Australasian strewnfield (c. 790,000 years ago), although the causes of the two are almost certainly unconnected and only coincidentally happened around the same time. Adding to the data is the large African Bosumtwi impact event (c. 1.07 million years ago) and the later Jaramillo reversal (c. 1 million years ago), another pair of events which has not gone unnoticed. This geophysics -related article

1634-774: Is a polarity interval lasting at least 10   million years. There are two well-established superchrons, the Cretaceous Normal and the Kiaman. A third candidate, the Moyero, is more controversial. The Jurassic Quiet Zone in ocean magnetic anomalies was once thought to represent a superchron but is now attributed to other causes. The Cretaceous Normal (also called the Cretaceous Superchron or C34) lasted for almost 40   million years, from about 120 to 83 million years ago , including stages of

1720-485: Is influenced by the ambient magnetic field at the time at which they formed. These rocks can preserve a record of the field if it is not later erased by chemical, physical or biological change . Because Earth's magnetic field is a global phenomenon, similar patterns of magnetic variations at different sites may be used to help calculate age in different locations. The past four decades of paleomagnetic data about seafloor ages (up to ~ 250 Ma ) has been useful in estimating

1806-410: Is known to have low intensity between about 130 Ma and 170 Ma , and these sections of ocean floor are especially deep, causing the geomagnetic signal to be attenuated between the seabed and the surface. Several studies have analyzed the statistical properties of reversals in the hope of learning something about their underlying mechanism. The discriminating power of statistical tests is limited by

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1892-472: Is no rate of reversals, as they are statistically random. The randomness of the reversals is inconsistent with periodicity, but several authors have claimed to find periodicity. However, these results are probably artifacts of an analysis using sliding windows to attempt to determine reversal rates. Most statistical models of reversals have analyzed them in terms of a Poisson process or other kinds of renewal process . A Poisson process would have, on average,

1978-584: The Nature Clinical Practice series of journals, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology , Nature Chemistry , and the Nature Reviews series of journals. Since 2005, each issue of Nature has been accompanied by a Nature Podcast featuring highlights from the issue and interviews with the articles' authors and the journalists covering the research. It is presented by Kerri Smith and features interviews with scientists on

2064-805: The Cretaceous period from the Aptian through the Santonian . The frequency of magnetic reversals steadily decreased prior to the period, reaching its low point (no reversals) during the period. Between the Cretaceous Normal and the present, the frequency has generally increased slowly. The Kiaman Reverse Superchron lasted from approximately the late Carboniferous to the late Permian , or for more than 50   million years, from around 312 to 262 million years ago . The magnetic field had reversed polarity. The name "Kiaman" derives from

2150-574: The Intellectual Observer broadened itself further to include literature and art as well. Similar to Recreative Science was the scientific journal Popular Science Review , created in 1862, which covered different fields of science by creating subsections titled "Scientific Summary" or "Quarterly Retrospect", with book reviews and commentary on the latest scientific works and publications. Two other journals produced in England prior to

2236-463: The Prince of Asturias Award for Communications and Humanity. Nature mostly publishes research articles. Spotlight articles are not research papers but mostly news or magazine style papers and hence do not count towards impact factor nor receive similar recognition as research articles. Some spotlight articles are also paid by partners or sponsors. The huge progress in science and mathematics during

2322-423: The Student and Intellectual Observer in 1871. The Quarterly Journal , after undergoing a number of editorial changes, ceased publication in 1885. The Reader terminated in 1867, and finally, Scientific Opinion lasted a mere 2 years, until June 1870. Not long after the conclusion of The Reader , a former editor, Norman Lockyer , decided to create a new scientific journal titled Nature , taking its name from

2408-561: The Unite the Right rally to oppose the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee , setting off violence in the streets and killing a young woman. When Nature posted a link to the editorial on Twitter , the thread quickly exploded with criticisms. In response, several scientists called for a boycott. On 18 September 2017, the editorial was updated and edited by Philip Campbell, the editor of the journal. When Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield won

2494-437: The mantle by the action of plate tectonics at subduction zones or the initiation of new mantle plumes from the core-mantle boundary . Supporters of this hypothesis hold that any of these events could lead to a large scale disruption of the dynamo, effectively turning off the geomagnetic field. Because the magnetic field is stable in either the present north–south orientation or a reversed orientation, they propose that when

2580-490: The solar wind because it had no magnetic field to protect it. They predict that ions would be stripped away from Earth's atmosphere above 100 km. Paleointensity measurements show that the magnetic field has not disappeared during reversals. Based on paleointensity data for the last 800,000 years, the magnetopause is still estimated to have been at about three Earth radii during the Brunhes–Matuyama reversal. Even if

2666-496: The structure of DNA , Nature did not send the paper out for peer review. John Maddox , Nature ' s editor, stated: "the Watson and Crick paper was not peer-reviewed by Nature ... the paper could not have been refereed: its correctness is self-evident. No referee working in the field ... could have kept his mouth shut once he saw the structure". An earlier error occurred when Enrico Fermi submitted his breakthrough paper on

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2752-628: The 19th century was recorded in journals written mostly in German or French , as well as in English . Britain underwent enormous technological and industrial changes and advances particularly in the latter half of the 19th century. The most respected scientific journals of this time were the refereed journals of the Royal Society , which had published many of the great works from Isaac Newton and Michael Faraday to Charles Darwin . In addition,

2838-623: The Australian town of Kiama , where some of the first geological evidence of the superchron was found in 1925. The Ordovician is suspected to have hosted another superchron, called the Moyero Reverse Superchron , lasting more than 20   million years (485 to 463   million years ago). Thus far, this possible superchron has only been found in the Moyero river section north of the polar circle in Siberia. Moreover,

2924-530: The Creative Commons attribution-non-commercial-share alike unported licence for those articles in Nature journals that are publishing the primary sequence of an organism's genome for the first time. In 2008, a collection of articles from Nature was edited by John S. Partington under the title H. G. Wells in Nature, 1893–1946: A Reception Reader and published by Peter Lang . Nature also publishes

3010-712: The Earth's field during the transition. The Brunhes–Matuyama reversal is a marker for the Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) defining the base of the Chibanian Stage and Middle Pleistocene Subseries at the Chiba section, Japan, which was officially ratified in 2020 by the International Union of Geological Sciences . It is useful in dating ocean sediment cores and subaerially erupted volcanics. There

3096-410: The Earth's magnetic field was gathered largely by means of research vessels, but the complex routes of ocean cruises rendered the association of navigational data with magnetometer readings difficult. Only when data were plotted on a map did it become apparent that remarkably regular and continuous magnetic stripes appeared on the ocean floors. In 1963, Frederick Vine and Drummond Matthews provided

3182-428: The Earth. Detailed calculations confirm that if the Earth's dipole field disappeared entirely (leaving the quadrupole and higher components), most of the atmosphere would become accessible to high-energy particles but would act as a barrier to them, and cosmic ray collisions would produce secondary radiation of beryllium-10 or chlorine-36 . A 2012 German study of Greenland ice cores showed a peak of beryllium-10 during

3268-418: The abruptness of the reversal. A 2004 paper estimated that it took over several thousand years; a 2010 paper estimated that it occurred more quickly, perhaps within a human lifetime; a 2019 paper estimated that the reversal lasted 22,000 years. The apparent duration at any particular location can vary by an order of magnitude, depending on geomagnetic latitude and local effects of non-dipole components of

3354-898: The activities of the International Scientific Unions." During the years 1945 to 1973, editorship of Nature changed three times, first in 1945 to A. J. V. Gale and L. J. F. Brimble (who in 1958 became the sole editor), then to John Maddox in 1965, and finally to David Davies in 1973. In 1980, Maddox returned as editor and retained his position until 1995. Philip Campbell became Editor-in-chief of all Nature publications until 2018. Magdalena Skipper has since become Editor-in-chief. In 1970, Nature first opened its Washington office; other branches opened in New York in 1985, Tokyo and Munich in 1987, Paris in 1989, San Francisco in 2001, Boston in 2004, and Hong Kong in 2005. In 1971, under John Maddox 's editorship,

3440-437: The age of geologic sections elsewhere. While not an independent dating method, it depends on "absolute" age dating methods like radioisotopic systems to derive numeric ages. It has become especially useful when studying metamorphic and igneous rock formations where index fossils are seldom available. Through analysis of seafloor magnetic anomalies and dating of reversal sequences on land, paleomagnetists have been developing

3526-548: The best data from elsewhere in the world do not show evidence for this superchron. Certain regions of ocean floor, older than 160 Ma , have low-amplitude magnetic anomalies that are hard to interpret. They are found off the east coast of North America, the northwest coast of Africa, and the western Pacific. They were once thought to represent a superchron called the Jurassic Quiet Zone , but magnetic anomalies are found on land during this period. The geomagnetic field

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3612-650: The case that removing such statues, and erasing names, runs the risk of "whitewashing history", and stated "Instead of removing painful reminders, perhaps these should be supplemented". The article caused a large outcry and was quickly modified by Nature. The article was largely seen as offensive, inappropriate, and by many, racist. Nature acknowledged that the article as originally written was "offensive and poorly worded" and published selected letters of response. The editorial came just weeks after hundreds of white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia , in

3698-516: The content. While it does, to an extent, provide free online access to articles, it is not a true open access scheme due to its restrictions on re-use and distribution. On 15 January 2015, details of a proposed merger with Springer Science+Business Media were announced. In May 2015 it came under the umbrella of Springer Nature , by the merger of Springer Science+Business Media and Holtzbrinck Publishing Group 's Nature Publishing Group , Palgrave Macmillan , and Macmillan Education . Since 2011,

3784-482: The core, the mantle—which is a semiconductor —is thought to remove variations with periods less than a few months. A variety of possible rock magnetic mechanisms were proposed that would lead to a false signal. That said, paleomagnetic studies of other sections from the same region (the Oregon Plateau flood basalts ) give consistent results. It appears that the reversed-to-normal polarity transition that marks

3870-672: The development of Nature were the Quarterly Journal of Science and Scientific Opinion , established in 1864 and 1868, respectively. The journal most closely related to Nature in its editorship and format was The Reader , created in 1863; the publication mixed science with literature and art in an attempt to reach an audience outside of the scientific community, similar to Popular Science Review . These similar journals all ultimately failed. The Popular Science Review survived longest, lasting 20 years and ending its publication in 1881; Recreative Science ceased publication as

3956-411: The editor, followed by peer review (in which other scientists, chosen by the editor for expertise with the subject matter but who have no connection to the research under review, will read and critique articles), before publication. In the case of Nature , they are only sent for review if it is decided that they deal with a topical subject and are sufficiently ground-breaking in that particular field. As

4042-618: The end of Chron C5Cr ( 16.7  million years ago ) contains a series of reversals and excursions. In addition, geologists Scott Bogue of Occidental College and Jonathan Glen of the US Geological Survey, sampling lava flows in Battle Mountain, Nevada , found evidence for a brief, several-year-long interval during a reversal when the field direction changed by over 50 degrees. The reversal was dated to approximately 15   million years ago. In 2018, researchers reported

4128-514: The field recovers from such a disruption it spontaneously chooses one state or the other, such that half the recoveries become reversals. This proposed mechanism does not appear to work in a quantitative model, and the evidence from stratigraphy for a correlation between reversals and impact events is weak. There is no evidence for a reversal connected with the impact event that caused the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event . Shortly after

4214-442: The field reverses in the liquid outer core but not in the solid inner core . Diffusion in the outer core is on timescales of 500 years or less while that of the inner core is longer, around 3,000 years. In the early 20th century, geologists such as Bernard Brunhes first noticed that some volcanic rocks were magnetized opposite to the direction of the local Earth's field. The first systematic evidence for and time-scale estimate of

4300-425: The first geomagnetic polarity time scales were produced, scientists began exploring the possibility that reversals could be linked to extinction events . Many such arguments were based on an apparent periodicity in the rate of reversals, but more careful analyses show that the reversal record is not periodic. It may be that the ends of superchrons have caused vigorous convection leading to widespread volcanism, and that

4386-581: The first magnetic-polarity time scale in 1959. As they accumulated data, they continued to refine this scale in competition with Don Tarling and Ian McDougall at the Australian National University . A group led by Neil Opdyke at the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory showed that the same pattern of reversals was recorded in sediments from deep-sea cores. During the 1950s and 1960s information about variations in

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4472-464: The founder of Nature , was a professor at Imperial College . He was succeeded as editor in 1919 by Sir Richard Gregory . Gregory helped to establish Nature in the international scientific community. His obituary by the Royal Society stated: "Gregory was always very interested in the international contacts of science, and in the columns of Nature he always gave generous space to accounts of

4558-705: The four most recent reversals. Clement (2004) suggests that this duration is dependent on latitude, with shorter durations at low latitudes and longer durations at mid and high latitudes. The duration of a full reversal varies between 2,000 and 12,000 years. Although there have been periods in which the field reversed globally (such as the Laschamp excursion ) for several hundred years, these events are classified as excursions rather than full geomagnetic reversals. Stable polarity chrons often show large, rapid directional excursions, which occur more often than reversals, and could be seen as failed reversals. During such an excursion,

4644-456: The initial rejection (but eventual acceptance) of Stephen Hawking 's black-hole radiation . In June 1988, after nearly a year of guided scrutiny from its editors, Nature published a controversial and seemingly anomalous paper detailing Jacques Benveniste and his team's work studying water memory . The paper concluded that less than a single molecule of antibody diluted in water could trigger an immune response in human basophils , defying

4730-500: The internal magnetic field did disappear, the solar wind can induce a magnetic field in the Earth's ionosphere sufficient to shield the surface from energetic particles. Brunhes%E2%80%93Matuyama reversal The Brunhes–Matuyama reversal , named after Bernard Brunhes and Motonori Matuyama , was a geologic event, approximately 781,000 years ago, when the Earth's magnetic field last underwent reversal . Estimations vary as to

4816-516: The international scientific publishing company Springer Nature . Nature was one of the world's most cited scientific journals by the Science Edition of the 2022 Journal Citation Reports (with an ascribed impact factor of 50.5), making it one of the world's most-read and most prestigious academic journals . As of 2012 , it claimed an online readership of about three million unique readers per month. Founded in autumn 1869, Nature

4902-474: The journal as either letters or news articles. The papers that have been published in this journal are internationally acclaimed for maintaining high research standards. Conversely, due to the journal's exposure, it has at various times been a subject of controversy for its handling of academic dishonesty, the scientific method , and news coverage. Fewer than 8% of submitted papers are accepted for publication. In 2007, Nature (together with Science ) received

4988-672: The journal has published Nature's 10 "people who mattered" during the year, as part of their annual review. According to Science , another academic journal, being published in Nature has been known to carry a certain level of prestige in academia. In particular, empirical papers are often highly cited, which can lead to promotions, grant funding, and attention from the mainstream media. Because of these positive feedback effects, competition among scientists to publish in high-level journals like Nature and its closest competitor, Science , can be very fierce. Nature ' s impact factor ,

5074-423: The journal split into Nature Physical Sciences (published on Mondays), Nature New Biology (published on Wednesdays), and Nature (published on Fridays). In 1974, Maddox was no longer editor, and the journals were merged into Nature . Starting in the 1980s, the journal underwent a great deal of expansion, launching over ten new journals. These new journals comprise Nature Research, which was created in 1999 under

5160-452: The laboratory liquid metal experiment "VKS2". In some simulations, this leads to an instability in which the magnetic field spontaneously flips over into the opposite orientation. This scenario is supported by observations of the solar magnetic field , which undergoes spontaneous reversals every 9–12 years. With the Sun it is observed that the solar magnetic intensity greatly increases during

5246-845: The late 2000s, dedicated editorial and current affairs columns are created weekly, and electoral endorsements are featured. The primary source of the journal remains, as established at its founding, research scientists; editing standards are primarily concerned with technical readability. Each issue also features articles that are of general interest to the scientific community, namely business, funding, scientific ethics, and research breakthroughs. There are also sections on books, arts, and short science fiction stories. The main research published in Nature consists mostly of papers (articles or letters) in lightly edited form. They are highly technical and dense, but, due to imposed text limits, they are typically summaries of larger work. Innovations or breakthroughs in any scientific or technological field are featured in

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5332-595: The latest research, as well as news reports from Nature 's editors and journalists. The Nature Podcast was founded – and the first 100 episodes were produced and presented – by clinician and virologist Chris Smith of Cambridge and The Naked Scientists . Nature Portfolio actively supports the self-archiving process and in 2002 was one of the first publishers to allow authors to post their contributions on their personal websites, by requesting an exclusive licence to publish, rather than requiring authors to transfer copyright. In December 2007, Nature Publishing Group introduced

5418-666: The magnetic profiles across the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge were symmetrical and matched the pattern in the north Atlantic's Reykjanes ridge . The same magnetic anomalies were found over most of the world's oceans, which permitted estimates for when most of the oceanic crust had developed. Because no existing unsubducted sea floor (or sea floor thrust onto continental plates ) is more than about 180 million years ( Ma ) old, other methods are necessary for detecting older reversals. Most sedimentary rocks incorporate minute amounts of iron-rich minerals , whose orientation

5504-434: The magnetic reversals were made by Motonori Matuyama in the late 1920s; he observed that rocks with reversed fields were all of early Pleistocene age or older. At the time, the Earth's polarity was poorly understood, and the possibility of reversal aroused little interest. Three decades later, when Earth's magnetic field was better understood, theories were advanced suggesting that the Earth's field might have reversed in

5590-411: The name Nature Publishing Group and includes Nature , Nature Research Journals , Stockton Press Specialist Journals and Macmillan Reference (renamed NPG Reference). In 1996, Nature created its own website and in 1999 Nature Publishing Group began its series of Nature Reviews . Some articles and papers are available for free on the Nature website, while others require the purchase of premium access to

5676-563: The number of popular science periodicals doubled from the 1850s to the 1860s. According to the editors of these popular science magazines, the publications were designed to serve as "organs of science", in essence, a means of connecting the public to the scientific world. Nature , first created in 1869, was not the first magazine of its kind in Britain. One journal to precede Nature was Recreative Science: A Record and Remembrancer of Intellectual Observation , which, created in 1859, began as

5762-548: The physical law of mass action . The paper excited substantial media attention in Paris, chiefly because their research sought funding from homeopathic medicine companies. Public inquiry prompted Nature to mandate an extensive and stringent experimental replication in Benveniste's lab, through which his team's results were refuted. Before publishing one of its most famous discoveries, Watson and Crick 's 1953 paper on

5848-489: The placement and maintenance of statues honouring scientists with known unethical, abusive and torturous histories. Specifically, the editorial called on examples of J. Marion Sims , the 'Father of gynecology' who experimented on African American female slaves who were unable to give informed consent, and Thomas Parran Jr. who oversaw the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment . The editorial as written made

5934-618: The public throughout the world, in a fashion that conveys their significance for knowledge, culture and daily life. Many of the most significant scientific breakthroughs in modern history have been first published in Nature . The following is a selection of scientific breakthroughs published in Nature , all of which had far-reaching consequences, and the citation for the article in which they were published. In 2017, Nature published an editorial entitled "Removing Statues of Historical figures risks whitewashing history: Science must acknowledge mistakes as it marks its past". The article commented on

6020-447: The remote past. Most paleomagnetic research in the late 1950s included an examination of the wandering of the poles and continental drift . Although it was discovered that some rocks would reverse their magnetic field while cooling, it became apparent that most magnetized volcanic rocks preserved traces of the Earth's magnetic field at the time the rocks had cooled. In the absence of reliable methods for obtaining absolute ages for rocks, it

6106-494: The site. As of 2012 , Nature claimed an online readership of about 3 million unique readers per month. On 30 October 2008, Nature endorsed an American presidential candidate for the first time when it supported Barack Obama during his campaign in America's 2008 presidential election . In October 2012, an Arabic edition of the magazine was launched in partnership with King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology . As of

6192-429: The small number of polarity intervals. Nevertheless, some general features are well established. In particular, the pattern of reversals is random. There is no correlation between the lengths of polarity intervals. There is no preference for either normal or reversed polarity, and no statistical difference between the distributions of these polarities. This lack of bias is also a robust prediction of dynamo theory . There

6278-406: The span of 3   million years. In a period of 3   million years centering on 24 Ma , 13 reversals occurred. No fewer than 51 reversals occurred in a 12-million-year period, centering on 15 Ma . Two reversals occurred during a span of 50,000 years. These eras of frequent reversals have been counterbalanced by a few "superchrons": long periods when no reversals took place. A superchron

6364-407: The subsequent airborne ash caused extinctions. Tests of correlations between extinctions and reversals are difficult for several reasons. Larger animals are too scarce in the fossil record for good statistics, so paleontologists have analyzed microfossil extinctions. Even microfossil data can be unreliable if there are hiatuses in the fossil record. It can appear that the extinction occurs at the end of

6450-533: The time it was released, it had about 10,000 subscribers. On 2 December 2014, Nature announced that it would allow its subscribers and a group of selected media outlets to share links allowing free, "read-only" access to content from its journals. These articles are presented using the digital rights management system ReadCube (which is funded by the Macmillan subsidiary Digital Science), and does not allow readers to download, copy, print, or otherwise distribute

6536-433: The underlying dynamics. For example, Gary Glatzmaier and collaborator Paul Roberts of UCLA ran a numerical model of the coupling between electromagnetism and fluid dynamics in the Earth's interior. Their simulation reproduced key features of the magnetic field over more than 40,000 years of simulated time, and the computer-generated field reversed itself. Global field reversals at irregular intervals have also been observed in

6622-498: The weak interaction theory of beta decay . Nature rejected the paper because it was considered too remote from reality. Fermi's paper was published by Zeitschrift für Physik in 1934. The journal apologised for its initial coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in which it linked China and Wuhan with the outbreak, which may have led to racist attacks. From 2000 to 2001, a series of five fraudulent papers by Jan Hendrik Schön

6708-430: The world, and by affording them an opportunity of discussing the various Scientific questions which arise from time to time. This was later revised to: First, to serve scientists through prompt publication of significant advances in any branch of science, and to provide a forum for the reporting and discussion of news and issues concerning science. Second, to ensure that the results of science are rapidly disseminated to

6794-475: Was retracted due to concerns raised regarding some of the panels shown in a figure, making it the most-cited retracted paper ever. In 1999, Nature began publishing science fiction short stories. The brief " vignettes " are printed in a series called "Futures". The stories appeared in 1999 and 2000, again in 2005 and 2006, and have appeared weekly since July 2007. Sister publication Nature Physics also printed stories in 2007 and 2008. In 2005, Nature

6880-1027: Was awarded the European Science Fiction Society 's Best Publisher award for the "Futures" series. One hundred of the Nature stories between 1999 and 2006 were published as the collection Futures from Nature in 2008. Another collection, Futures from Nature 2 , was published in 2014. Nature is edited and published in the United Kingdom by a division of the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature that publishes academic journals, magazines , online databases, and services in science and medicine. Nature has offices in London, New York City, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Boston , Tokyo, Hong Kong, Paris, Munich , and Basingstoke . Nature Portfolio also publishes other specialized journals including Nature Neuroscience , Nature Biotechnology , Nature Methods ,

6966-610: Was conceived, born, and raised to serve polemic purpose." Many of the early editions of Nature consisted of articles written by members of a group that called itself the X Club , a group of scientists known for having liberal, progressive, and somewhat controversial scientific beliefs for their time. Initiated by Thomas Henry Huxley , the group consisted of such important scientists as Joseph Dalton Hooker , Herbert Spencer , and John Tyndall , along with another five scientists and mathematicians; these scientists were all avid supporters of Darwin's theory of evolution as common descent ,

7052-468: Was first circulated by Norman Lockyer and Alexander MacMillan as a public forum for scientific innovations. The mid-20th century facilitated an editorial expansion for the journal; Nature redoubled its efforts in explanatory and scientific journalism . The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the creation of a network of editorial offices outside of Britain and the establishment of ten new supplementary, speciality publications (e.g. Nature Materials ). Since

7138-438: Was published in Nature . The papers, about semiconductors , were revealed to contain falsified data and other scientific fraud. In 2003, Nature retracted the papers. The Schön scandal was not limited to Nature ; other prominent journals, such as Science and Physical Review , also retracted papers by Schön. In 2024, a paper titled " Pluripotency of mesenchymal stem cells derived from adult marrow," published in 2002,

7224-549: Was rejected by the scientific journals Nature and Journal of Geophysical Research , and remained unpublished until 1967, when it appeared in the literary magazine Saturday Review . The Morley–Vine–Matthews hypothesis was the first key scientific test of the seafloor spreading theory of continental drift. Past field reversals are recorded in the solidified ferrimagnetic minerals of consolidated sedimentary deposits or cooled volcanic flows on land. Beginning in 1966, Lamont–Doherty Geological Observatory scientists found that

7310-480: Was the journalistic qualities of Nature that drew readers in; "journalism" Maddox states, "is a way of creating a sense of community among people who would otherwise be isolated from each other. This is what Lockyer's journal did from the start." In addition, Maddox mentions that the financial backing of the journal in its first years by the Macmillan family also allowed the journal to flourish and develop more freely than scientific journals before it. Norman Lockyer ,

7396-507: Was thought that reversals occurred approximately every million years. The next major advance in understanding reversals came when techniques for radiometric dating were improved in the 1950s. Allan Cox and Richard Doell , at the United States Geological Survey , wanted to know whether reversals occurred at regular intervals, and they invited geochronologist Brent Dalrymple to join their group. They produced

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