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A conversation with an advanced alien species is likely to be simple and to take 1,000 years. It might also be dangerous.

This research team is working out how to detect extraterrestrial cells in the liquid water ocean hidden beneath Enceladus’s icy crust.

Elastic thinking can reveal the assumptions that hamstring our ability to solve seemingly intractable problems.

A new book envisions an encounter of minds between the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, the physicist Werner Heisenberg, and the philosopher Immanuel Kant.

From Einstein to Twain, Garson O’Toole investigates the truth behind your favorite — and often misattributed — quotes.

If our Universe were born a little differently, there wouldn’t have been any planets, stars, galaxies, or chemically interesting reactions.

It may be time for a cosmological paradigm shift.

Research suggests that emotional intelligence is more vital for success than IQ.

Pugs are funny and cute, but that is because we have bred them intentionally to have debilitating genetic mutations. Is that ethical?

For a substantial fraction of a second after the Big Bang, there was only a quark-gluon plasma. Here’s how protons and neutrons arose.

Chemical changes inside Mars’ core caused it to lose its magnetic field. This, in turn, caused it to lose its oceans. But how?

While many imagine terrifying futures run by AI, Rohit Krishnan is quietly identifying real problems and solutions.

If our goal is to effect the greatest possible progress, what would it look like to approach this holistically? What might need to dispositionaly in how we approach solving our most important problems—at an individual level, a community level, or at a civilizational or global one? We asked our experts to think big picture about how what new thinking would be required to create a larger pro-progress framework.

They have held our fascination ever since we first identified their remains.

Meditation can put you in a wiser relationship with life.

As early as we’ve been able to identify them, the youngest galaxies seem to have large supermassive black holes. Here’s how they were made.

It’s the ultimate setup for a Thanksgiving Day disaster. The physics of water and its solid, liquid, and gas phases compels us not to do it.

Napoleon Bonaparte was a man of many faces. European historian Michael Broers explains which are featured on the silver screen and why.

Watching for changes in the Red Planet’s orbit over time could be new way to detect passing dark matter.

Neuroscientist Christof Koch on human minds, AI, and bacteria.

Is mathematics woven into the very fabric of reality? Or is it merely a product of the human mind?

Within the “Dark Triad” of personality traits, narcissism exists on a confidence spectrum.

Hubble showed us what our modern day Universe looks like. JWST’s big goal was to teach us how the Universe grew up. Here’s where we are now.

Denmark’s 10 Jante Laws are grim, and yet they bring so much happiness. 

The expanding Universe, in many ways, is the ultimate out-of-equilibrium system. After enough time passes, will we eventually get there?

While the concept stretches back centuries, it has garnered significant attention in recent decades.

Considering the perspectives of others has important benefits for individuals and for society. There is one easy way to do it.

About the project The goal of driving more progress across the world—scientifically, politically, economically, socially, etc—is one shared by many. And yet, debates about the best way to maximize progress […]

Bob Dylan gave us the paradoxical gem “there’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all.” He had a point.