When Einstein gave General Relativity to the world, he included an extraneous cosmological constant. How did his ‘biggest blunder’ occur?
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The second law of thermodynamics is an inviolable law of reality. Here’s what everyone should know about closed, open, and isolated systems.
Advances in ancient DNA analysis gave researchers a new way to trace the movements of peoples across Eurasia.
The emergence of life in the universe is as certain as the emergence of matter, gravity, and the stars. Life is the universe developing a memory, and our chemical detection system could find it.
Philosophers have been asking the question for hundreds of years. Now neuroscientists are joining the quest to find out.
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“You gotta know when to fold ’em.”
Dark personality traits include psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism. Is there room for empathy?
Research suggests that experience may matter more than innate ability when it comes to a sense of direction.
Air conditioning may keep a room cool, but using it is heating up the planet. It is time for something new — or old.
The shift from steam to electricity was inevitable — but some foresaw it earlier than others.
There’s a quantum limit to how precisely anything can be measured. By squeezing light, LIGO has now surpassed all previous limitations.
A new book envisions an encounter of minds between the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, the physicist Werner Heisenberg, and the philosopher Immanuel Kant.
Because of dark energy, distant objects speed away from us faster and faster as time goes on. How long before every galaxy is out of reach?
For decades, theorists have been cooking up “theories of everything” to explain our Universe. Are all of them completely off-track?
By studying the oldest animals, researchers hope to pinpoint factors affecting human longevity.
Scientists across a range of disciplines have helped solve Darwin’s dilemma.
Just how close are we to setting up camp on another planet? It’s complicated.
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A proponent of panpsychism argues moral truth is inherent in consciousness.
Sometimes, going “deeper” doesn’t reveal the answers you seek. By viewing more Universe with better precision, ESA’s Euclid mission shines.
The odds are slim, but the consequences would be literally world-ending. There really is a chance of a black hole devouring the Earth.
Spicy foods are enjoyed the world over, but scientists don’t know why people partake in culinary masochism.
The book “The Genesis Machine” outlines the promise and peril of synthetic biology, a powerful tool that will allow us to program life like a computer.
JWST just found its first transiting exoplanet, and it’s 99% the size of Earth. But with no atmosphere seen, perhaps air is truly rare.
Red dwarf stars were supposed to be inhospitable. But TOI-700, now with at least two potentially habitable worlds, is quite the exception.
The Universe begins with negligible amounts of angular momentum, which is always conserved. So why do planets, stars, and galaxies all spin?
Studies show talk therapy works, but experts disagree about how it does so. Finding the answer could help professionals and patients.
A new family of drugs is changing the way scientists are thinking about obesity.
Today, we could use Big Data to radically reform democracy. Tomorrow, we could build nanofabricators and usher in an era of abundance. Is society ready?
SpinLaunch will cleverly attempt to reach space with minimal rocket fuel. But will physics prevent a full-scale version from succeeding?