You can’t farm spiders — but putting spider genes into silkworms works even better.
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A unique combination of DNA and silica is the strongest known material for its density (but you’ll need a lot of it before you can build a suit from it).
While ice itself is slick, slippery, and difficult to navigate across under most circumstances, skaters easily glide across the ice.
A new technique for analyzing networks can tell who wields soft power.
If the “self” is not real, then we are slaves to a billiard ball universe, trapped in a nihilistic nightmare in which we cannot change our fate.
Lab experiments showed Caribbean box jellyfish are quick studies of their environment.
Quantum uncertainty and wave-particle duality are big features of quantum physics. But without Pauli’s rule, our Universe wouldn’t exist.
Even with the best technology imaginable, you’d probably never be able to exist as a consciously aware brain in a vat.
Artificial intelligence can forecast the behavior of viruses and quickly make vaccines to thwart them.
Intentions tend to get mangled by overreach in every complex organization — so dial up the charisma and the clarity.
Try writing a novel without using the letter “e.”
Before we formed stars, atoms, elements, or even got rid of our antimatter, the Big Bang made neutrinos. And we finally found them.
If you said “with the Big Bang,” congratulations: that was our best answer as of ~1979. Here’s what we’ve learned in all the time since.
Vanadium dioxide is a strange material that “remembers” information and when it was stored. This is akin to biological memory.
This network physicist is mapping the world’s most significant data to create the most beautiful visualizations of information we have ever seen.
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Every proton contains three quarks: two up and one down. But charm quarks, heavier than the proton itself, have been found inside. How?
Every organization has a power block of dutiful but unappreciated talent. Here’s an effective plan for engagement.
Joseph Campbell argued that nearly every myth can be boiled down to a hero’s journey. Was he right?
How are we to deal with the quantization of spacetime and gravity?
“All the plausible paths to a really great future, involve the development of machine superintelligence at some point.”
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JWST has brought us more distant views of the early Universe than ever before. Is the Big Bang, and all of modern cosmology, in trouble?
In the future, driving an app across a bridge could let engineers know how safe it is.
Galaxies don’t simply feed their central supermassive black holes, but the activity generated inside affects the entire galaxy and more.
When you bring two fingers together, you can feel them “touch” each other. But are your atoms really touching, and if so, how?
There may be a symmetrical interdependence between order and chaos.
They have held our fascination ever since we first identified their remains.
Understanding Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning can help you become a catalyst of change.
Einstein’s relativity overthrew the notion of absolute space and time, replacing them with a spacetime fabric. But is spacetime truly real?
If the electromagnetic and weak forces unify to make the electroweak force, maybe, at higher energies, something even grander happens?
Despite the wide diversity of spider species, most orb-weavers seem to follow the same playbook when building their webs.