From ancient Greek cosmology to today’s mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, explore the relentless quest to understand the Universe’s invisible forces.
Search Results
You searched for: Water
Though ultimately incorrect, the ancient Greek philosophers blazed a conceptual trail for humankind to understand the nature of reality.
In many ways, it was worse than Chernobyl.
Anyone up for a crisp, blonde ale?
For centuries, Newton’s inverse square law of gravity worked beautifully, but no one knew why. Here’s how Einstein finally explained it.
They are expected to be cheaper to build and even more reliable than today’s nuclear plants.
Everything acts like a wave while it propagates, but behaves like a particle whenever it interacts. The origins of this duality go way back.
Rogue Putin is the biggest risk of 2023. Here are the other nine, explained by global political expert Ian Bremmer.
▸
17 min
—
with
The Uros of Lake Titicaca live on floating islands made from reeds. How did they get there?
Bathtubs and toilets each got their own rooms until health professionals urged architects to put all the plumbing in one room.
The way that the ancient Megalodon adapted to water temperature has important implications for modern marine creatures.
It’s an agricultural moonshot: Scientists hope to increase plant yields by hacking photosynthesis, the process that powers life on Earth.
The new electrically conductive substrate could be the future of hydroponic farming.
Known as the Great Oxygenation Event, Earth froze over as oxygen accumulated in our atmosphere, nearly driving all life extinct.
France’s notorious disregard for washing gradually changed as military authorities and public schools promoted a modern regime of cleanliness.
The war in Ukraine is unlikely to trigger a catastrophic nuclear meltdown. Physics and smart engineering are the reasons why.
The ominous cloud of acid rain hasn’t vanished but rather drifted toward the developing world.
Tumor cells traverse many different types of fluids as they travel through the body.
The Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887, despite expectations, revealed a null result: no effect. The implications were revolutionary.
“The Tao of the wise is to work without effort.”
No shots fired. No flags raised. And no dry land gained. Still, the U.S. effectively grew by the size of about two Californias in December.
The term “zero-point energy” has at least two meanings, one that is innocuous and one that is a great deal sexier (and scammier).
Some microbes can withstand Earth’s most inhospitable corners, hinting that life may be able to survive similarly extreme conditions on other worlds.
Earth wasn’t created until more than 9 billion years after the Big Bang. In some lucky places, life could have arisen almost right away.
2023 is an exciting time for the study of quark-gluon plasmas.
Drop sodium in water, and a violent, even explosive reaction will occur. But quantum physics is needed to explain why.
All across the Universe, planets come in a wide variety of sizes, masses, compositions, and temperatures. And most have rain and snow.
An unexpected ancient manufacturing strategy may hold the key to designing concrete that lasts for millennia.
Data from the Zhurong rover suggests the Red Planet was wet more recently than we thought.