It’s the greatest cosmic masquerade of all: a star that fakes its own death! “If you are a dreamer come inIf you are a dreamer a wisher a liarA hoper a […]
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Truth is stranger than fiction. Especially if that truth is caused by fiction. Consider the strange case of Agloe, a place name that started appearing on maps of New York State in the 1930s.
If we scaled the entire Universe’s history from the Big Bang until now to be “one Universe year,” what would our future look like? “The way to love anything is to […]
Recently a good friend told me over a pint in our local pub that he hadn’t been able to sleep a wink for two nights. He’d been left traumatised by […]
How the Universe made the elements and atoms that make up you and me, and everything else on Earth. “Things are the way they are because they were the way they […]
Am I the only one fascinated by the issue of currency conversion in literature? When a posh fictional nobleman is rumored to have an income of such-and-such, or when a […]
This looks like a pretty standard map of a bit of Denmark. In fact, it is no such thing. For there isn’t really a town called Köbstad in Denmark, […]
The greatest Messier object of them all, a treat all winter long. “What caused me to undertake the catalog was the nebula I discovered above the southern horn of Taurus on […]
As teachers begin using new and questionable methods, will students suffer and get left behind? “Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.”–Dan Quayle As the first full […]
The Sun — like nearly all stars — burns bright through its nuclear reactions, sending light, heat and energy out into the Universe over a timespan of billions of years. But how? “The sun is […]
When things don’t add up, it’s a great sign that something amazing is right around the corner. Every Thursday, we take an older post from the Starts With A Bang archives […]
If you had never heard of global warming before, how would you figure out whether it’s happening? “There is no question that climate change is happening; the only arguable point […]
When all the galaxies, stars, gas, dust, dark matter and all the other forms of matter and radiation are summed together, its energy still pales in comparison to dark energy. […]
The surveillance state is here, and it is apparently here to stay. The question moving forward is how effective the U.S. constitutional system and democratic culture will be in keeping the American version from slipping into Chinese mode.
School’s out! Here is an end-of-the-school-year post in three strands positing that much of what we do in school is a monumental waste of time, creativity and intellect. Strand one: […]
This was originally published on the Scientific American guest blog on February 5th How much does environment influence intelligence? Several years ago University of Virginia Professor Eric Turkheimer demonstrated that […]
Without owners, corporations run amok — like children without a chaperone.
Learning is no longer a singular event, but rather an ongoing project to keep yourself updated with the latest skills and knowledge.
A few months ago I posted a piece which has become my most popular blog post by quite a landslide.The postcovered various techniques for learning and looked at the empirical […]
There’s much to criticise about this map of Pangea [1], but in spite of the geological anachronisms, it’s hard to tear your eyes away from it. The map shows a […]
Scott Barry Kaufman (@sbkaufman) is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology at NYU, co-founder of The Creativity Post, Scientific American blogger, and a friend. He is also the author of Ungifted: Intelligence […]
Making a rare appearance on the balcony of Ecuador’s London embassy where he has spent the last six months, Julian Assange lashed out against “war criminals,” a corrupt media and […]
To condemn the riots that rocked Belfast last Friday as “shameful”, as the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Theresa Villiers has done, fails to address the two conflicting […]
Isogloss maps are irresistible, even if they are about cucumbers
One of cartography’s most persistent myths: mapmakers of yore, frustrated by the world beyond their ken, marked the blank spaces on their maps with the legend Here be monsters. It’s […]
One reason I can’t buy the claim that conservative intellectual has become an oxymoron is that on our campuses it’s so often the conservatives who defend “liberal education.” I’m going […]
Some research proposes that sorrow in fiction might be a form of psychological relief. A more fruitful explanation is that important virtues, values and morals that elicit uplifting emotions accompany sad moments in fiction.
Update (Jan, 2014): Amir’s patent application (search for no. 12/743357) has been rejected due to prior art by Mathews and MacLeod. Update (Feb, 2013): Following this blog post Amir corrected two […]
God know we would have satellites one day, so He left us a message
If phantom islands can be discovered as recently as 2012, maybe there are still more of them out there.