Handle, the latest robot from Google-backed Boston Dynamics, elicits both excitement and anxiety. The company’s founder has described it as “nightmare-inducing.”
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Phobos and Deimos may have had another, inner, much larger companion! “The larger inner moons fall back to Mars after about 5 million years due to the tidal pull of […]
How can we solve a problem like Malaria? One doctor has an idea: send in the mathematicians.
A new report shows the marijuana industry is poised to have a major economic impact.
There’s only medicine that works and medicine that does not, writes Paul Offit.
Self-driving hobbyists and researchers can now build a self-driving vehicle for around $700. Utilizing free software and hardware plans from George Hotz’s startup Comma, brave enthusiasts are crowdsourcing solutions as we move towards more autonomous vehicles.
If you don’t have pristine, dark skies, you might never connect to the Universe. But there’s hope. “Before we devised artificial lights and atmospheric pollution and modern forms of nocturnal entertainment […]
A college course on how to recognize “bullshit” addresses fake news, memes, clickbaiting and misleading advertising.
If you think we’re talking about someone else, don’t be so hasty. One study highlights how the vast majority of people choose ignorance over knowing.
Risks abound for those plucky few willing to put their lives on the line to populate the Red Planet.
A “forbidden research” conference at MIT tackles areas of science constrained by ethical, cultural and institutional restrictions.
Meet the Cornell scientist who figured out the link between fracking disposal wells and Oklahoma’s earthquakes.
An incredible story, the current controversy, and the hope for the future. Our Universe was born pristine, with no stars, galaxies, molecules or even stable atoms, some 13.8 billion years […]
Loop quantum gravity gets the ancient atomist back into the loop, showing how black holes might explode, and that the Big Bang might be a Big Bounce.
If Scotty beams you up for a trip around the Sun, here’s how to handle it. “I really didn’t have to work, shall we say, with Star Trek. It was a […]
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault holds the world’s largest collection of seeds, for safekeeping.
Spontaneous talk on surprise topics. Historian Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens and Homo Deus, on the dizzying ethical questions that surround what’s coming next – from superhuman cyborgs to algorithms that know us better than we know ourselves.
There are many scientific explanations for ghost sightings. This is the first ever to involve CERN.
What if we told you that, right now, your phone was making a map of your interior surroundings — whether you’re at work or at home — and sending that data to places unknown?
Hydrogen is #1, Helium is #2. Who’s number 3? Hint: it’s not #3 in the periodic table! “It is the function of science to discover the existence of a general reign […]
Scientists release observation data from 1,600 stars in hopes the public can help find planets that orbit stars outside our solar system.
Pluripotent stems cells might be the key to creating reliable lab-grown meat.
Author Tony Dokoupil predicts a Liberal backlash against grass now that it’s becoming legal.
Prime minister or postal worker: if you’ve been condemned for corruption in France, you’re on this map
Ritualized killings once took place in many societies and in most regions around the globe.
Earth is pretty much the limit of how large you can get and still be rocky. Anything much larger, and you’re a gas giant. “How vast those Orbs must be, and […]
A yeast found in the gut micro biome of infants is implicated in the development of asthma.
PTSD develops after a person experiences, or is a witness to, a life-threatening or traumatic event — a natural disaster, for example — or is exposed to combat, or sexual […]
TRAPPIST-1 is 40 light years from Earth. It would take us millions of years to get there.
Elon Musk, Sam Harris, Ray Kurzweil and other visionaries discuss AI superintelligence at a recent conference.