Here’s what Einstein meant when he spoke of cosmic dice and the “secrets of the Ancient One”.
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The whole isn’t greater than the sum of its parts; that’s a flaw in our thinking. Non-reductionism requires magic, not merely science.
When people pick the greatest scientist of all-time, Newton and Einstein always come up. Perhaps they should name Johannes Kepler, instead.
Dark matter has never been directly detected, but the astronomical evidence for its existence is overwhelming. Here’s what to know.
The first elements in the Universe formed just minutes after the Big Bang, but it took hundreds of thousands of years before atoms formed.
In the 20th century, many options abounded as to our cosmic origins. Today, only the Big Bang survives, thanks to this critical evidence.
The most common element in the Universe, vital for forming new stars, is hydrogen. But there’s a finite amount of it; what if we run out?
Yes, the Universe is expanding, but if you’ve ever wondered, “How fast is it expanding,” the answer isn’t in terms of a speed at all.
The laws of physics obey certain symmetries and defy others. It’s theoretically tempting to add new ones, but reality doesn’t agree.
There are so many problems, all across planet Earth, that harm and threaten humanity. Why invest in researching the Universe?
How close are we to human teleportation? Successes in quantum teleportation experiments abound.
Lasers, mirrors, and computational advances can all work together to push ground-based astronomy past the limits of our atmosphere.
Even if a leading theory of consciousness is wrong, it can still be useful to science.
When you mix science with speculation, you get speculation. But the underlying science is still real. Whenever you hear the phrase, “it’s just a theory,” it should trigger alarm bells in […]
Science cannot help us understand or describe first-person experience. Zen koans are a powerful form for helping us reach that description.
University of Tokyo scientists observe predicted quantum biochemical effects on cells.
A new paper combines two concepts from the edges of astrophysics: Dyson Spheres and black holes. A Type III civilization could combine them.
It’s a wild idea, but there’s a way to test it. No matter how far we look out in the Universe, there’s always more “Universe” to see. Even at the extreme […]
Though ultimately incorrect, the ancient Greek philosophers blazed a conceptual trail for humankind to understand the nature of reality.
Figuring out the answer involved a prism, a pail of water, and a 50 year effort by the most famous father-son astronomer duo ever.
The first stars in the Universe were made of pristine material: hydrogen and helium alone. Once they die, nothing escapes their pollution.
Dark matter’s hallmark is that it gravitates, but shows no sign of interacting under any other force. Does that mean we’ll never detect it?
Our thermodynamic arrow of time explains why the entropy of any isolated system always increases. But it can’t explain what we perceive.
Gravitational waves carry enormous amounts of energy, but spread out quickly once they leave the source. Could they ever create black holes?
Neuroscientist Christof Koch on human minds, AI, and bacteria.
In the early stages of the hot Big Bang, there were only free protons and neutrons: no atomic nuclei. How did the first elements form from them?
CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is the most powerful particle accelerator ever. To go even further, we’ll have to overcome something big.
Once merely a theoretical curiosity, they might be the key to understanding so much more. Out of all of the known particles — both fundamental and composite — there are a whole slew of properties […]
The mutual distance between well-separated galaxies increases with time as the Universe expands. What else expands, and what doesn’t?