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Travel half the distance to your destination, and there’s always another half to go. Despite Zeno’s Paradox, you always arrive right on time.

Civil engineer Martin Lebek has a brilliant plan to redress the world’s phosphorus imbalance.

With sea levels rising, the Dutch are pondering floating cities — while also exporting their engineering know-how to turn a tidy profit.

It is time to give the Russian cosmologist the credit he deserves.

It’s not for climate science and condensed matter physics. It’s for advancing our understanding beyond spherical cows.

Fossil Cycad National Monument held America’s richest deposit of petrified cycadeoid plants, until it didn’t.

It took 9.2 billion years of cosmic evolution before our Sun and Solar System even began to form. Such a small event has led to so much.

There are two different ways to measure the expansion rate of the Universe, and they don’t agree. And no, new measurements don’t help.

Scientists are notoriously resistant to new ideas. Are they falling prey to groupthink? Or are our current theories just that successful?

Is a proton fundamentally more ‘quarky’ or ‘gluey’ in nature? One question that every curious child winds up asking at some point or other is, “what are things made of?” Every […]

The dream of zero resistance is closer than you may think. One of the biggest physical problems in modern society is resistance. Not political or social resistance, mind you, but electrical […]

Nikolaas Tinbergen’s concept of “supernormal stimulus” explains why humans are attracted to a heightened version of reality.

Hermann Minkowski called Einstein a “lazybones” with a “not very solid” education. Less than 10 years later, he would eat his words.

The discovery calls into question the few things scientists know about these powerful astronomical phenomena.

Humans are already so integrated with technology that the dream of transhumanism is a reality. Can we handle what comes next?

Our Sun will continue to grow, becoming a red giant and then a planetary nebula. Here’s how large it will get.

Many contrarians dispute that cosmic inflation occurred. The evidence says otherwise.

Whether or not life exists elsewhere in the Universe, we can be assured of one thing: We are the only human beings in the cosmos.

If you can’t surpass it in a vacuum, try doing so in a medium instead. In our Universe, there are a few rules that everything must obey. Energy, momentum, and angular […]

Because there’s not enough Walden pond to go around.

In partisan political times, recognizing the scientific truth is more important than ever. Scientists must be vocal and clear about reality.

And the one step we can take to show extraterrestrials we’re figuring it out. Every year, Earth’s meteor showers accomplish two important tasks. This composite photograph shows a large number of […]

Life arose on Earth very early on. After a few billion years, here we are: intelligent and technologically advanced. Where’s everyone else?

Benjamin Franklin’s lightning rod saved countless lives, but some religious leaders denounced his invention.

More than 20% Americans live in a state with access to a medically assisted death.

About the project The goal of driving more progress across the world—scientifically, politically, economically, socially, etc—is one shared by many. And yet, debates about the best way to maximize progress […]

For billions of years on Earth, life was limited to simple unicellular, non-differentiated organisms. In a mere flash, that changed forever.

What if intelligence can thrive without consciousness?

For some reason, when we talk about the age of stars, galaxies, and the Universe, we use “years” to measure time. Can we do better?

One single plot of data embodies the most profound thing we know about the stars.