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The tanning industry, beset on several sides by mounting evidence showing the dangers of their services, isn’t going down without a fight.

Scientists have discovered that animal organisms can support the existence of photosynthetic chloroplasts, so could the human body one day make its energy from the sun?

A company has completed a prototype of a robot designed specifically to look for lunar ice, a potentially rich source of water and other materials for use during other lunar expeditions.

You know that supposed ‘debate’ about climate change? It sure isn’t about the science. A review by Dr. James Powell , a former member of the National Science Board (under […]

            I write here about the Risk Perception Gap, when we worry too much about smaller risks and not enough about bigger ones. More than just an interesting example of […]

Today Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces that Shape How We Think, Feel and Behavegoes on sale. The author is NYU Assistant Professor of Marketing Adam Alter. I came […]

The last fifty years have seen a series of apocalyptic predictions, and not just of the Mayan Calendar variety. But human action should be motivated by present conditions, not doom and gloom. 

What happens when you ban a book? Sales increase. The modern maxim that any press is good press is true. If you really want people to read a book, tell […]

Optimism Bias – “Things will work out okay” or “things will work out better for me than the next guy” or, simply, “It won’t happen to ME!” – is one the mental games we play in order to do the things we want to do even when those choices come with costs or danger. 

Thirty-five years after their launch, the two Voyager deep space probes are about to enter interstellar space, while still transmitting data back to Earth.

A decade ago, Chris Hedges titled his analysis of the addictive power of war War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. If war truly is a force that gives […]

On the second half of my U.K. trip, we spent a few days in the lovely city of Edinburgh, the capitol of Scotland. My wife Elizabeth has written a thorough […]

[Editor’s Note: It’s happening again. I hadn’t gotten any of these messages since last year, and I was starting to hope that the wormhole, or whatever strange conduit it was, […]

This article was originally published on AlterNet. What kind of world would we have if a majority of the human race was atheist? To hear religious apologists tell it, the […]

A lingering problem with renewable energy is that it is not a consistent producer. But a new battery can store energy for later use, making renewables more cost-effective for business.

By smashing atoms of gold together at near-light speeds, scientists have created a primordial plasma state that existed for only one-millionth of second after the Big Bang occurred.

Using NASA’s Kepler space telescope, astronomers have found an alien solar system that exhibits the same structure as ours, with planets rotating on a single plane around their parent star. 

In the search for planets beyond our solar system that could support life, scientists have drawn up a more specific list of bio-signature chemicals, including sulfur gases and ethane. 

Here is the story of how far the argument against marriage equality has come, and how feeble it has become, in three steps.

This is probably your last chance to see Venus cross directly in front of the sun as the event will not reoccur until 2117. Scientists want to gather data to find exoplanets similar to Earth. 

Bill Nye has made national news with his statements on creationism versus evolution on Big Think. The big idea behind it: if you reject science, you won’t succeed, and we as a society won’t succeed to the fullest extent.

A commitment to space exploration satisfies our curiosity and need to explore new lands, it provides innovation and new jobs to the economy, and it will help our species escape this rock. 

By measuring the planet’s atmosphere as light from the sun refracted against it, scientists will be better equipped to find and analyze the composition of planets outside our solar system. 

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider will now attempt to create individual particles of dark matter. Meanwhile, University of Michigan scientists have observed new threads of the mysterious stuff. 

Throughout the history of our solar system, the sun’s proximity to exploding supernovae has had an important influence on the development of life on Earth, says a new study out of Denmark. 

In honor of Earth Day, I wanted to share an article written by my former colleague Ross Robertson for EnlightenNext magazine called “A Brighter Shade of Green: Rebooting Environmentalism for the 21stCentury.” […]

The discovery of the Higgs boson brought forth a fresh crop of high-minded religious apologists to favor us with platitudes about how science and religion can be reconciled, if only […]

What is the Big Idea? Human beings have biological clocks that are set to the path of the sun. But our modern lives disrupt this synchronization of internal and social […]

     Dear England,       The British press has had its knickers in a twist over Americans appropriating Britishisms for some time, whingeing about it in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The […]

Today Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times has posted a thoughtful blog about universal health coverage, inspired in part by the tragic events in Aurora, Colorado.  I’ve been involved in the […]