The Universe is full of surprises. These are the biggest, plus what they mean. “Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.” –Boris Pasternak So it is in […]
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OK, smartphone user (yes, we know that most of you, at this very moment, are now peering down onto a rectangular screen), have you ever wasted time on your phone? Of […]
If our “standard candles” aren’t so standard, is dark energy still real? “Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice.From what I’ve tasted of desireI hold with […]
“If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man’s future.”
Although Isaac Asimov declined to participate in a 1959 government-run conference for anti-ballistic missile technology he did pen some thoughts about the nature of creativity.
Can the world’s most fantastic and speculative “theory of everything” candidate shed light on the Universe’s most invisible objects? “I just think too many nice things have happened in string […]
Where college application season often means reaching for the stars, it’s also important to maintain perspective about your financial limitations.
“When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.”
“A second thing that an individual must do in seeking to love his enemy is to discover the element of good in his enemy, and everytime you begin to hate that person and think of hating that person, realize that there is some good there and look at those good points which will over-balance the bad points.”
“What after all, has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities, and courage to advocate them.”
Be afraid. Be VERY afraid! Of Ebola. Of ISIS. Of immigrants threatening to bring both threats across a porous border that can’t be protected by a President who can’t even […]
Other particles — electrons, neutrinos, photons and more — can exist on their own. But quarks never will. Here’s why. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Maschen under C.C.-1.0. “In physics, you don’t have to […]
About three-quarters of Americans—74 percent, to be precise—believe in God. This 3-question quiz can help predict if you are likely to be among that majority.
Sam Harris: The Self is an Illusion Sam Harris describes the properties of consciousness and how mindfulness practices of all stripes can be used to transcend one’s ego. Ray Kurzweil: […]
What we are more often presented with than not–from the realm of politics to the grocery store aisle–is a phony array of options that adversely affects our individual and collective psychology.
Insight–that eureka moment when a new idea appears like a bolt from the blue–is the most essential characteristic of creativity. Without insight, there simply can be no creativity.
We all want to be happy. Some have even said that achieving happiness is the goal of life. But we wouldn’t look to a technology company for such wisdom, would we?
In my motley career I have had long conversations with heads of state and Nobel Prize winners. I have hiked north of the Arctic Circle and watched humpback whales amble […]
When people were asked to throw a fat man off a bridge to save the lives of others (you know, ethics?), they were more likely to do so when the question was posed in their second language.
A British submarine may be the first to test quantum locational technology capable of measuring an object’s relative position 1,000 times more accurately than current GPS.
“Sometimes I think that a parody of democracy could be more dangerous than a blatant dictatorship, because that gives people an opportunity to avoid doing anything about it.” Aung San […]
From 1974 through 1981, Haruki Murakami ran a jazz club in Tokyo, Japan, and wondered what direction his life would run. After long soul searching, his life ran in the […]
Einstein’s quantum description of light earned him a Nobel prize, but he’s mostly remembered for relativity. At their core, special and general relativity are, in fact, not relative. Explore Einstein’s […]
How the Cosmic Microwave Background — the Big Bang’s leftover radiation glow — continues to shed light on the birth of our Universe. Image credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration. The announcement of the […]
How a scientist you never heard of made String Theory possible. Image credit: Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics, at http://aether.lbl.gov/bccp/dimensions.html. When he died on September 7, 2012, theoretical physicist Claud […]
How a fundamental but unstable particle might be our first window into particle physics beyond the Standard Model. Image credit: Muon g-2 magnet, courtesy of Fermilab. “You suddenly realize that […]
Barbara McClintock not only inspired a reclusive character in Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, she also advanced the study of genetics. McClintock was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology in […]
Oslo’s beautiful city hall is one of Norway’s most popular buildings and one of the world’s most beautiful seats of civic government. The large wall decoration on the second floor, […]
The human capacity for reason may be fragile and partial but it is not belied by studies in which large percentages of subjects answer a few tricky questions incorrectly.
“You can’t tell Marie Curie that she can’t do something,” says Hank Green, host of the SciShow. The first woman to receive world renown in science, Curie was the first […]