Guest Thinkers — February 16, 2011

It’s the first day of school!

Scott McLeod

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

School starts today here in Minnesota. Let’s see how we’re doing.

Hmmm… Looks like we still have some work to do.

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Film strip collage of abstract images—including faces with X marks, colorful patterns, and nature elements—evokes the vibrant allure of "Crazy Rich Asians.

High Culture

“Crazy Rich Asians” director Jon Chu on the American Dream and silencing your inner critic

“No matter how long you’ve been doing a job or how good people say you are, you need to care as if you’ve never done it before.”

Starts With A Bang

Ask Ethan: Could we determine if UAPs/UFOs are aliens?

Although a great many unidentified sights have been seen in the skies, none have conclusively demonstrated the presence of aliens. So far.

A detailed image of the moon with visible craters and surface textures, set against a dark sky filled with numerous stars.

13.8

The key to detecting life trillions of miles away from Earth

Finding life beyond our Solar System requires understanding its host planet.

A graph depicting projectile motion with displacement on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal axis. The projectile's trajectory forms a perfect parabola, with initial velocity u and angle θ clearly indicated.

Starts With A Bang

Physics heresy: Projectiles don’t actually make parabolas

Taught in every introductory physics class for centuries, the parabola is only an imperfect approximation for the true path of a projectile.

A person is giving a presentation at a podium with a large abstract, colorful light pattern displayed on a screen behind them.

Starts With A Bang

Inflation and dark matter are not like string theory

Inflation, dark matter, and string theory are all proposed extensions to the prior consensus picture. But what does the evidence say?

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