A thought experiment from 1867 leads scientists to design a groundbreaking information engine.
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More work is needed before declaring the technique a fountain of youth.
“She understood me and I understood her. I loved that pigeon.”
Despite being the closest planet to the Sun, Mercury “only” reaches 800 °F at its hottest. Venus is always hotter, even at night.
Determining if the universe is infinite pushes the limits of our knowledge.
We catalogue seven more board games to teach children science, problem-solving, and even foster their creativity.
Walter Pitts rose from the streets to MIT, but couldn’t escape himself.
What is human dignity? Here’s a primer, told through 200 years of great essays, lectures, and novels.
A strange object found in the desert has prompted worldwide speculation.
Mass determines a star’s fate… except when it doesn’t. Supernova events are common, visually spectacular astronomical cataclysms. In 1987, a supernova just ~168,000 light-years away was observed in the Large Magellanic […]
The unfamiliar landscape of America’s medical past is marked by bizarre incidents, forgotten breakthroughs and selfless sacrifice.
What do communist dictators Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong have in common with U.S. Presidents like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan? Hint: It’s the same thing they have in […]
Trump is #45 but Pence is #48 – and other strange consequences of the curious office of vice president.
The Sun produces a wide variety of particles and radiation throughout it, but all of its neutrinos are produced in the core: where nuclear reactions take place. The various reactions […]
“You dream about these kinds of moments when you’re a kid,” said lead paleontologist David Schmidt.
Edinburgh University project geo-locates victims of Scottish ‘witch-prickers’ in the 16th and 17th century.
Psychedelics are going mainstream. Here’s your reading list.
Experts plead with Americans to keep gatherings limited this Thanksgiving, while families devise new ways to celebrate the holidays.
And could Earth-based life provide the seeds for biology elsewhere? Today, on Earth, there’s an enormous variety and diversity of life on our planet. Every single surviving lifeform appears, in […]
What qualifies someone for the top position in American government?
For many, 2020 will not be remembered as a “best of” much. We don’t need to repeat the reasons here; it’s sufficient to point out that a 100-year pandemic was […]
Time always moves in the same direction, but what if the Universe were contracting? As we step forward in time, a number of things always seem to happen together. Objects […]
The concept of ‘relativistic mass’ has been around almost as long as relativity has. But is it valid? No matter who you are, where you are, or how quickly you’re moving, […]
There’s more light than we can account for, and we’ve just measured it robustly for the first time. When we look out at the darkest night skies available on Earth, even […]
An algorithm produced every possible melody. Now its creators want to destroy songwriter copyrights.
A computer coder and a lawyer decide they have a right to speak for all the songwriters that ever lived, those who are alive today, and all those yet to be born.
Here’s why scary stories were once an integral part of Christmas Eve festivities.
Thousands of people are experiencing severe pulmonary issues from vaping, and some are dying.
Thinning forests in the Western United States can save billions of gallons of water per year and improve conservation efforts.
The Standard Model and General Relativity can’t be all there is. But how will we discover what lies beyond them? One of the biggest problems with physics is that, apart from […]
From literature to physics, the annual Nobel Prizes aim to highlight the most groundbreaking achievements in every field.