Surprising Science — March 25, 2014

Playing with a Sphere of Water on the ISS

There are a lot of ways to entertain oneself on the International Space Station. Playing with a large sphere of water is one of them. Watch what happens when an antacid tablet is added to this experiment:

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Image credit: NASA

13.8

NASA’s DART: A giant leap for mankind in protecting Earth from an asteroid impact

This technological feat changes our cosmic history.

The Learning Curve

Women face 5 biases in STEM. Here’s how to bridge the gender gap.

Women have made incredible gains into STEM fields, but they continue to face gender biases in the workplace.

Videos

“I don’t have imposter syndrome and neither do you”

An inclusion expert explains why women of color are held back.

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7 min

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with

Ruchika Tulshyan

The Present

Why GPT-3 and other AI language models write pseudo-profound bullshit

While text-generating AI can be very useful in some applications, it generates pseudo-profound bullshit — that is, content that sounds good to humans but whose truth value is unknown.

Neuropsych

Study shows people more likely to lie when using a laptop instead of a smartphone

While most participants fibbed a little bit, laptop users were much more likely to lie – and by a lot more.

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