All scientific theories, at some level, are wrong. That’s why consensus is so vital. There are two important and common words that, when used scientifically, have a very different meaning than […]
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Ketamine’s remarkable effect bolsters a new theory of mental illness.
It’s how successful our current theories are. Some 500 years ago, there was one scientific phenomenon that was, without controversy, extremely well-understood: the motion of the celestial objects in the sky. […]
Enough mass in one location will always create a black hole. But not all masses are possible. If you take enough mass and compress it into a small enough volume […]
It’s not a gambit. It’s not fraud. It’s not an opinion. And it’s not biased like you think it is. Most of us, when we think about what science is, default […]
Almost certainly not. Here’s the science of why. The Universe, as we know it, simply doesn’t add up. On the one hand, we can look out on a cosmic scale and […]
The Big Bang is our accepted origin of the Universe. But is there another possibility? Since the mid-1960s and the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background, the Big Bang has […]
We all share atoms with every person, living or dead, on Earth. There’s more in common among us than you might think. When you eat food, drink liquids, or even breathe […]
A single lifetime is more than enough to take you to the limits of the Universe. Right now, there are only three things limiting how far our spacecrafts can take […]
One look at the uncertainties and the assumptions changes the story tremendously. Is there intelligent life out there in the Milky Way beyond our own Solar System? If so, how […]
And what might we learn as we collect new, never-before-seen data? If you took one of history’s top scientists from 100 years ago and dropped them into today’s world, what […]
It’s an incredibly useful approximation. But the truth takes us far deeper. Anyone who’s ever taken a physics course has learned the same myth for centuries now: that any object thrown, […]
Scientific surprises are often how science advances. But more often than not, they’re just bad science. When you’re a scientist, getting an unexpected result can be a double-edged sword. The best […]
The age of the Universe is only 13.8 billion years, but we know that protons survive much longer. Here’s how. Since the discovery of radioactivity in the 19th century, humanity has […]
It might seem puzzling, in a Universe bound by the speed of light, that this could be true. Here’s the science behind it. If you look out into the distant Universe, […]
If your Universe contains any matter at all, a constant Hubble parameter is absolutely impossible. Our observable Universe is an enormous place, with some two trillion galaxies strewn across the […]
As soon as you start thinking about energy and gravity, you’ll realize the need to go beyond it. When it comes to a science like physics, theoretical expectations must always be […]
Our Universe is 13.8 billion years old, and our Sun formed about 2/3rds of the way through. Here’s what came before it. When it comes to the great cosmic question of […]
Truth is, dinosaurs aren’t as distinct as you may think, but to find out why, we first have to consider how we got the term “dinosaur.”
If dark energy were stronger or weaker, everything would be pretty much the same. And that’s a puzzle. After the Big Bang, the Universe was full of matter and radiation. It […]
North Korea’s statements, actions, and the physics of how to do it all point to the same terrifying conclusion. There are few things in this world that have the capability […]
We always assume that dark matter is particle-based, and we just need to find which particle it is. But what if it isn’t so? Everything we’ve ever detected in the Universe, […]
Sure, we found the Higgs Boson at the LHC earlier this decade. But what else has, and more importantly, hasn’t turned up? It’s now just over five years since the two […]
A recent study points to the possibility that just 70,000 years ago, a star passed through our Solar System. How often does this happen, and what are the consequences? We […]
We see matter, but not antimatter, in our Universe. Could black holes be the answer? One of the greatest cosmic puzzles in our entire Universe is why there’s so much more […]
When we place the known objects in the Solar System in order, four inner, rocky worlds and four, outer, giant worlds stand out. Traditionally, these were defined as planets. Will […]
Distances in the expanding Universe don’t work like you’d expect. Unless, that is, you learn to think like a cosmologist. There are a few fundamental facts about the Universe — its origin, […]
Spoiler: it isn’t the end of the Universe, and it’s not likely to lead to new evidence for the Multiverse, either. On March 14, 2018, the most famous and celebrated […]
It’s the first, most naive question you might think to ask. The solution is a lot more complicated than you imagine. According to a large amount of evidence, the overwhelming majority […]
If nature makes equal amounts of matter and antimatter, how are we here? When you look out at the vastness of the Universe, at the planets, stars, galaxies, and all there […]