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Can quantum computers do things that standard, classical computers can’t? No. But if they can calculate faster, that’s quantum supremacy.

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

A volley of new insights reignites the debate over whether our choices are ever truly our own.

Empty, intergalactic space is just 2.725 K: not even three degrees above absolute zero. But the Boomerang Nebula is even colder.

Growing up in the United States, I remember on Halloween my mother used to say, “Honey, this is not just a day for costumes and candy. You must also remember […]

Why are the rest masses of fundamental particles related like this? When it comes to the nature of matter in the Universe, the Standard Model describes the known elementary particles perfectly […]

A thought experiment from 1867 leads scientists to design a groundbreaking information engine.

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

The majority of the matter in our Universe isn’t made of any of the particles in the Standard Model. Could the axion save the day?

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.

Complex organisms and living worlds couldn’t exist without these transitions. You couldn’t make the Universe we have today if everything were always the same. Although many philosophically favored the idea […]

There are a few possible solutions to the problem of interstellar travel, but they largely remain within the realm of science fiction.

Passing chunks of ice can fertilize ocean waters and play a role in the planet’s carbon cycle.

After 100 million nights of people asking, “What are those twinkly lights?” it is pretty remarkable that we happen to live in one of the first generations that actually knows the answer.

What if intelligence can thrive without consciousness?

Who needs steroids when you have the placebo effect?

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

It is wrong to think that these three statements contradict each other. We need to see that they are all true to see that a better world is possible.

With a telescope at just the right distance from the Sun, we could use its gravity to enhance and magnify a potentially inhabited planet.

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

Each year in mid-August, Earth plows through the debris stream of an enormous comet, creating the Perseids. 2023’s show will be magnificent!

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

Researchers have discovered 830-million-year-old microbes living inside a salt rock on Earth. Could the same occur on Mars?

Philosophers and scientists spent millennia arguing about the nature of light. It turned out to be stranger than anyone imagined.

To do more, it sometimes pays to do nothing at all.

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?

This storm rained electrons, shifted energy from the sun’s rays to the magnetosphere, and went unnoticed for a long time.

It’s like radar, but with light. Distributed acoustic sensing — DAS — picks up tremors from volcanoes, quaking ice and deep-sea faults, as well as traffic rumbles and whale calls.

Most male mammals have little or nothing to do with their kids. Why is our own species different?

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.