Science can’t stop aging, but it may be able to slow our epigenetic clocks.
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7 min
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Particle physicists use gigantic accelerators to investigate the infinitesimal.
It’s been 100 years since we discovered that the Universe was expanding. But if it’s expanding, then what is it expanding into?
The dying brain experiences a surge of electrical activity. Could this help explain the mysterious phenomena of near-death experiences?
In a time when we dislike and distrust our politicians, why can’t we get more popular leaders like Kim Jong Un and Bashar al-Assad?
Walking is rarer in the U.S. compared to similar nations. It is also deadlier: Nearly 7,500 pedestrians were killed in 2021.
Emotion dysregulation has been linked to unhealthy risk-taking, relationship challenges, and negative physical health outcomes.
Mansa Musa, perhaps history’s richest man, claims he ascended the throne of Mali after his predecessor sailed west and never came back. Could he have made it to the New World?
If our Universe were born a little differently, there wouldn’t have been any planets, stars, galaxies, or chemically interesting reactions.
Perhaps the whole Universe is the result of a vacuum fluctuation, originating from what we could call quantum nothingness.
Germans are masters of building cars, cooking brats — and sitting while peeing.
“Superhabitable” planets might be real, but Earth is probably as good as it gets.
Science fiction movies capture a classic human flaw: getting the future mostly wrong.
Not all conflict is bad. Expert Priya Parker explains how “heat” can be harnessed for good.
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6 min
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Across all wavelengths of light, the Sun is brighter than the Moon. Until we went to the highest energies and saw a gamma-ray surprise.
Meditation can put you in a wiser relationship with life.
It’s safe to use your face cream, as long as you aren’t eating it.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Does humanity have a moral imperative to seed life on lifeless worlds? And should we avoid colonizing a planet if life already exists there?
Within a month of that initial conversation, Peter Singer became a vegetarian.
Einstein’s most famous equation is E = mc², which describes the rest mass energy inherent to particles. But motion matters for energy, too.
Thomas Edison was on to something…
The replication crisis has debunked many of psychology’s fair-haired hypotheses, but for the marshmallow test, things have only become more interesting.
The Shirky Principle states that “institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.”
Soviet censorship was thorough yet fallible.
Geniuses and prodigies are captivating. But generalists rule the world.
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6 min
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May 22, 2023
The title of this crossword is a quote from Plutarch. In this puzzle, we include many of the diverse beliefs of mankind and touch on many attempts to explain life and its meaning. Can the human spirit prevail over the barriers to survival? Are the barriers locked inside the mind itself?
A surprising JWST discovery around Fomalhaut has a different, superior explanation: not a great dust cloud, but a mere background object.
George Orwell got it right: “Never use a long word where a short one will do.”
If something exists, it is by definition natural.