The greatest cosmic battle — between gravity and expansion — has been going on for billions of years. Who will win? “We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.”-Wernher von Braun When you […]
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Flowers, the reproductive organs of angiosperms, were a novel structure that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.
Love might be blind, but she is rarely deaf: Language and love have always been intimately entangled. Indeed Darwin believed love was one of the main reasons we have language […]
Edward Frenkel, who is one of the leading mathematical physicists in the world, makes math look sexy.
More than a decade of slow starvation has begun to weaken the inner organs of the media, not just its surface elements like production values and paper quality.
“I leave you with four words: I’m glad Reagan dead,” Mike “Killer Mike” Render rapped in his song “Reagan” off the 2012 album R.A.P. Music. His harsh, inflammatory statements drew […]
I participate in a Unitarian Universalist spiritual community. The UU faith has some basic beliefs, largely universal truths about how to be a good person, but when it comes […]
Much talk about “the 1%” ignores three key issues. First, not all inequality is equally bad. Second, the rich are mostly as replaceable as you and me. Third, if the […]
How the most powerful telescope ever built will owe its successes and discoveries to scientists who’ll never get the glory. “The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without […]
Why was it that when Galileo viewed Venus and Jupiter with the naked eye, Venus, the brighter planet, appeared larger, but when viewed through a telescope, Jupiter appeared larger?
Butterfinger bars and Reese’s Pieces nicely straddle the middle of the continuum, as does the airy, malty, chocolaty, rift-healing Three Musketeers.
Nearly 50 percent of American adults are single. And many of them are happily single.
A philosopher is a wise man distinguished for wisdom and sound judgement while a sage is a wise man distinguished for wisdom and from experience. The philosophers Philosophy is concerned with […]
“I weirdly do consider myself an optimist about love.” – Aziz Ansari (born on this date in 1983)
“I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.” – George Washington (born on this date in 1732)
“Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.” – Anaïs Nin (born on this date in 1903)
“There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.” – Ansel Adams
“To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” – Nicolaus Copernicus (born on this date in 1473)
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”
– Yoko Ono (born on this date in 1933)
“Possibly because I’ve lived so much of my life in difficult circumstances, I think I have a more profound understanding of life.” – Mo Yan (born on this date in 1955)
“The older I get, the better I used to be.” – John McEnroe (born on this date in 1959)
“A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.” – Frederick Douglass (born on this date in 1818)
“If you take a bale of hay and tie it to the tail of a mule and then strike a match and set the bale of hay on fire, and if you then compare the energy expended shortly thereafter by the mule with the energy expended by yourself in the striking of the match, you will understand the concept of amplification.” – William Shockley (born on this date in 1910)
Why the biggest, most expensive NASA telescope ever is also the most important thing we’ve ever attempted. “Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes […]
They’re the densest objects in the Universe, but even they won’t live forever. Here’s why not. “It’s like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None […]
Extraterrestrials might be thinking twice about visiting Earth, based on this view from space of the latest winter storm that is pummeling the southeastern United States.
We will have a better and freer society when we have a greater understanding of math.
Tory Johnson: While there are plenty of slackers among the unemployed, the vast majority of out-of-work people I know are very eager to find a job.
ONE of my childhood buddies died unexpectedly at the age of eighteen. That was many years ago, in Hamm, Germany. While alive, he was a known brawler, a brutish drunk, […]
“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” -Abraham Lincoln (born on this date in 1809)