Search Results

What happened before the Big Bang?

Here’s the psychology that explains why many economists prefer to be narrowly right yet broadly wrong (they suffer from professional “rigor distortis”).

Caltech engineers create a stable ring of plasma in the air, a feat thought impossible.

A new study finds that narwhals race dive deep with their hearts barely beating as they escape humans.

Evidence from recent research suggests that it does matter where a calorie comes from because its source influences the intake of the next calorie. 

Researchers create a new form of matter, first theorized 50 years ago.

Another scintillating installment of Comment of the Week is here. Did you make the cut? 

We’ve all heard the number: 4.5 billion years. But how do we know, and how certain are we that the Earth and Sun are the same age? Billions of years ago, […]

Imagine charging your phone using the power of your heart.   

Physicists propose a new kind of space structure that can allow information to escape from black holes.

Sedna could be the very first known object from the Inner Oort Cloud. But time is running out to create and launch a mission. In 2003, scientists discovered an object beyond […]

Holes, lines, or even walls in space aren’t just fiction; they could actually exist! “Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.” –Francois de La Rochefoucauld The biggest lesson […]

When the past and future are no longer connected, some pretty weird stuff happens.

And if we did, what would happen if you fell in? Out in the countryside of rural America, you can find all sorts of attractions that are too-good-to-be-true. One of the […]

The weather in most parts of Russia forces drivers to face harsh conditions — snow, mud, and poor visibility. It’s in this environment that Cognitive Technologies saw an opportunity.

Even before we have the James Webb Space Telescope, a controversy over when the first stars formed is growing. As far back as our most powerful telescopes have ever looked, we’ve […]

Who will live on the this brand-new floating nation in the South Pacific—and how?

Scientists at GW School of Engineering and Applied Science develop a prototype solar panel that captures nearly double the amount of energy from light.

A classic essay defines different ways to disagree, from the worst to the best, with lessons that ring true in our divisive times.

At least 25% of the land that captures carbon is in the hands of indigenous people.

The origin of life on Earth may have nothing to do with Earth at all. “An extrapolation of the genetic complexity of organisms to earlier times suggests that life began before […]

Several things in nature go faster than the speed of light, without challenging general relativity.

But if a radical new idea comes to fruition, maybe we can find them after all. After decades of planning, building, prototyping, upgrading, and calibrating, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) […]

It isn’t just a theory; it’s the best way we have to make sense of everything that exists. “The physicist is like someone who’s watching people playing chess and, after watching […]

There are plenty of questions we don’t know the answer to. With quantum gravity, they might be solved! This article is written by Sabine Hossenfelder. Sabine is a theoretical physicist specialized […]

You don’t have to wait for 2018 to know that it likely won’t be a year with 25+ magnitude 7.0 earthquakes. A new story based on a fascinating scientific paper […]

It isn’t just the morality that’s dubious in the newest iteration of Star Trek. “If I die trying but I’m inadequate to the task to make a course change in the […]

Lazy but want to stay in shape? You may soon be able to have it both ways, thanks to a new pill in testing from GlaxoSmithKline. 

What if alien life — or even intelligence — don’t look like what we’re searching for? When the original Star Trek premiered, it was revolutionary for depicting sentient, intelligent species other than humans, living […]

‘Let there be light’ isn’t just biblical. It’s science. “By its very nature science knows no boundaries. Walling off any group, for any reason, from full participation damages the entire enterprise […]