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As we consider the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, the question arises – can any war be fought as a “just” war?  

If you are caught with “soft” drugs in the UK, you are now more likely to be prosecuted than if you are caught with “hard” drugs.

As it turns out, assessing long-term risk/reward ratio isn’t our strong suit.

“I don’t think that anything that’s really creative can be done without danger and risk.”

A more nuanced picture of Justice Antonin Scalia’s 30-year stint on the nation’s highest court tells a tale that complicates the conservative-mouthpiece narrative.

After then-president George W. Bush phoned Jacques Chirac, his French counterpart had to consult a biblical scholar to make sense of the conversation. 

Only 0.1% of all stars will die in a type II supernova. This one’s running away so fast, it’s literally a “shocking” sight. “The thing is, when you see your […]

Picasso didn’t fight in World War I, but he still struggled with how that war influenced his art and life.

Planets, Stars, Galaxies, Groups and Clusters are all real. But Superclusters? They’re nothing more than optical illusions. “It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.” –Virginia Woolf […]

American stuff is the stuff of American history, as recorded in still life painting.

Hawking’s greatest achievement is also the greatest source of misunderstanding. “Maybe that is our mistake: maybe there are no particle positions and velocities, but only waves. It is just that […]

Smarts Don’t Guarantee Success. Only a Hunger to Win Can. Take it from a 19-year-old college graduate. Brandon Adams says that most poker players, like financial traders, have sharply analytical […]

If Americans get a “D” in science, what should the A-students do? “It is worthwhile, too, to warn the teacher that undue severity in correcting faults is liable at times […]

At some point, a star’s core runs out of fuel. Then what? “Man loves company — even if it is only that of a small burning candle.”–Georg C. Lichtenberg You normally think […]

Our Sun gets its energy from fusion in its core. But can any light be made from the surface? “Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn’t people feel as free […]

An incredible live-blog of an incredible event. “It’s becoming clear that in a sense the cosmos provides the only laboratory where sufficiently extreme conditions are ever achieved to test new […]

A galaxy cluster that’s been actively devouring matter for hundreds of millions of years blows all the records away. “The world exploded into billions of atoms, and when it rearranged […]

Before NASA’s Dawn spacecraft found white weirdness on Ceres, it had a close encounter with the second largest asteroid: Vesta. “I have announced this star as a comet, but since […]

Why is it that in the face of a total lack of evidence for their effectiveness, so many people feel so much affection for quacks?

Each day, each of us faces 500 billion opportunities for genetic civil war to break out. Thankfully we’ve also evolved good ways to police and suppress these rogue parts, their mutinous mutations, and their declarations of independence.     

An interesting point in case are the twin maps of Africa shown here, one of the spread of Islam, the other the spread of AIDS. Beware of the map that is too straightforward and simple.

Four billion years ago, the Universe was a different place. What would we have seen? “In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night […]

Caleb M. Brown discovered a new dinosaur species… and used it to help him pop the question.

Many believe that evolution plays only ruthless “red in tooth and claw” games. But that view tends to ignore that nature is teeming with unseen or underappreciated teamwork. 

A new Barnes Foundation show highlights the connections between ancient artisanal ironwork and modern art.

Before you tout the next exoplanet as “the most Earth-like ever,” ask whether that’s true, and whether that’s even a good thing. “You can spend too much time wondering which […]

According to relativity, there’s no universal frame of reference. But the Big Bang gave us one anyway. “The slow philosophy is not about doing everything in tortoise mode. It’s less […]

Sure, they wiped out the dinosaurs, but do they really pose a risk to humans? “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind […]

Is everything astonishingly simple, though? Or is this a grandiose claim that falls flat when confronted with the evidence? “My main interest is the problem of the singularity. If we […]

Could everything we’ve put together about science turn out to be wrong? “Revolutions are something you see only in retrospect.” –Alan Greenspan We’re always on the lookout for the next […]