About one in five Americans believes that the Sun revolves around the Earth. And if you happened to collect 12 of those people on a jury in which the orbiting properties of our solar system were up for debate, the headlines about the verdict would probably read “Earth revolves around Sun, declares American jury.” But that wouldn't make it true.
Your biological clock is probably the most reliable machinery in your body: it runs 24-7 to regulate vital functions from sleep to metabolism and remains stubbornly steadfast when you fly across time zones. Scientists still don't know exactly how this this internal clock works. But now researchers have identified a missing gear that could offer a cure for jet lag.
Sleep is a time suck. If you multiplied the average recommended number of hours we should sleep in a day—eight for a typical adult—by the number of days in an average lifespan (78.8 years in the United States), that would amount to about 9,587.3 days. That's one third of your life spent unconscious. From an evolutionary standpoint, sleep is quite literally a waste of your time, yet it's fought its way through countless years of adaptation in nearly every living animal on Earth. So it must be important, right?
Air Pollution kills. A study released yesterday in the journal Nature found that in 2007, air pollution lead to the premature deaths of 3.45 million people worldwide—a number equivalent to the population of the state of Connecticut. And to add insult to injury, air pollution doesn't respect borders.