Isaac Newton would never have discovered the laws of motion had he studied only cats. Suppose you hold a cat, stomach up, and drop it from a second-story window. If a cat is simply a mechanical system that obeys Newton’s rules of matter in motion, it should land on its back. (OK, … | Continue reading
This article is an installment of Future Explored, Freethink’s weekly guide to world-changing technology. You can get stories like this one straight to your inbox every Saturday morning by subscribing here. It’s 2026, and the way you search the web has radically changed. Now, ins … | Continue reading
In the early 1950s, small, peculiar love letters were pinned up on the walls of the computing lab at the University of Manchester. Darling Sweetheart You are my avid fellow feeling. My affection curiously clings to your passionate wish. My liking yearns for your heart. You are my … | Continue reading
One day, a well-dressed stranger approached Hugo Mercier as he was walking back from university. The stranger told Mercier he was a doctor running late for an urgent appointment, but had forgotten his wallet at home and desperately needed 20 euros for a taxi. Mercier gave the doc … | Continue reading
Last year, researchers at the Alignment Research Center, a non-profit dedicated to aligning future machine learning systems with human interests, gave OpenAI’s large language model GPT-4 an amusing task: hire a human worker on TaskRabbit to solve a CAPTCHA (those annoying tests o … | Continue reading
I don’t feel like eating the last few bits of my meal because I am very full, but I do so out of obligation, a mixture of the fact that I have paid for it and that “there are people starving,” like my mother would tell me. Do I finish my meal out of guilt, even if it is unpleasan … | Continue reading
What can minerals tell us about the Earth’s evolving colors? According to mineralogist Bob Hazen, they reveal an incredible history. Thanks to new research, we now know that minerals play immense roles in technology, agriculture, and the very origin of life itself, even down to o … | Continue reading
Humans are among the most altruistic species that we’ve studied, due to our alloparental instincts – a trait we evolved into that allows us to care for offspring who are not our own. Across species, the ones who alloparent the most appear to be the most altruistic. Very altruisti … | Continue reading
One of the most important aspects of physics, or of any science in general, is to always muster up the greatest challenge to the leading physical theories you can. You can challenge prior results, you can challenge the methods used to obtain them, you can concoct new tests in new … | Continue reading
You may have seen this fantastically decrepit house before. It’s a minor internet celebrity — not so much because of its old age (though roughly 1,800 years is nothing to sneeze at), but because its four floors correspond so neatly to four historical eras: from the Roman Empire a … | Continue reading
At the beginning of his famous 2013 TED Talk, the Australian philosopher Peter Singer shows a video of a two-year-old girl who, lying on the street after being struck by a lorry, is passed by several people before someone finally takes her to the hospital. “How many of you would … | Continue reading
Four years ago, astronomers had a spectacular realization for a new type of science they could perform: they could, at long last, search for the presence (or absence) of a cosmic optical background. We have a theory about where light comes from in the Universe: we have the leftov … | Continue reading
The world might well be on the verge of a new arms race. The Trump administration seems to think so, anyway, having announced a U.S. withdrawal from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces agreement, a 1987 arms control agreement designed to cut development and eliminate stock of m … | Continue reading
From The Techno-Humanist Manifesto by Jason Crawford. Subscribe to Jason’s Substack here. Chapter 1: Fish in Water It may seem odd that progress needs a defense. The triumph of science, technology and industry has been told many times over—as the Great Enrichment, the Great Escap … | Continue reading
A beast is coming. It’s big, it’s powerful, and it’s going to change everything. If this sounds like the tagline from a Godzilla movie, then you have the right scope in mind, but I’m talking about a telescope … a very big telescope. Actually, it’s the Extremely Large Telescope (E … | Continue reading
When the Knowledge Sector emerged in the mid 20th century, our best understanding of the word ‘productivity’ came from manufacturing, which led to us measuring productivity based on quantity produced per hour. But in knowledge work, we’re not producing just one thing: We’re worki … | Continue reading
Hans Holbein the Younger’s 1533 portrait The Ambassadors displays a glaring flaw. Beneath its two subjects and their collection of worldly goods lies a gray blotch splayed across the canvas. A cursory glance may suggest it an odd misstep for an otherwise accomplished painter. But … | Continue reading
When the Knowledge Sector emerged in the mid 20th century, our best understanding of the word ‘productivity’ came from manufacturing, which led to us measuring productivity based on quantity produced per hour. But in knowledge work, we’re not producing just one thing: We’re worki … | Continue reading
Perhaps it’s human nature to want to only think positive thoughts about our heroes. With the 2024 Olympics about to begin, we hope for a clean victory for our favorite beloved athletes; we don’t want our sports heroes to cheat or use performance-enhancing drugs. We want our human … | Continue reading
According to one historian the “shot reverberated through England, and indeed through other countries.” In the words of another, more than a hundred years after the event, “no battle of the nineteenth century, save Waterloo, is better known.” There are few moments in the history … | Continue reading
Last February, I opened my laptop and began writing a goodbye letter to my 18-month-old daughter. “Dear Bea,” I began. “I want you to know how much I loved you…” I then carefully organized passwords to my computer, e-mail, and online brokerage accounts. My wife and I sat across f … | Continue reading
Every investor who has found success in the market has had some sort of advantage: an edge. Having an edge means you have something, be it information, skills, or strategies, that gives you an advantage over every other investor in the world. Let’s briefly look at four common typ … | Continue reading
Why do machines learn? Even in the recent past, this would have been a ridiculous question, as machines — i.e., computers — were only capable of executing whatever instructions a human programmer had programmed into them. With the rise of generative AI, or artificial intelligence … | Continue reading
Cameron “Cam” Lawrence is a connector, in the broadest and most demanding sense of the word. As CEO of Newlab — a deep tech venture platform with a global network of climate-themed innovation hubs — Lawrence oversees a battalion of game-changing inventors and investors: around 25 … | Continue reading
Stress is on the rise. According to global research site Gallup, Americans are more stressed today than 30 years ago, with 49% recently reporting that they experience stress frequently. High blood pressure, heart disease, strokes and obesity are among the many negative side effec … | Continue reading
Cultivating your own well-being does not mean getting rid of discomfort, according to neuroscientist Mary Helen Immordino-Yang. Immordino-Yang is a professor of education, psychology, and neuroscience at the University of Southern California, and she has spent years researching w … | Continue reading
It was only two years ago that JWST’s first science images were released. This view showcases the difference between the JWST’s NIRCam and MIRI views, with NIRCam’s being far sharper and revealing more objects. The MIRI view reveals dusty details that no other wavelength can, how … | Continue reading
Relationships are vital to our well-being and a life well-lived. Multiple longitudinal studies have shown the central role human connection plays in our health, happiness, and resilience. That’s not just true of our partners, friends, and families either. Research conducted by Aa … | Continue reading
Evidently, emotions partially define how humans tackle everyday situations. My question is: What is the ‘healthy amount’ of letting our emotions to take over our rational thinking? Especially, how should we look on anger in tough scenarios? – Gellért, Hungary I really love this q … | Continue reading
A widespread concern with overpopulation became prominent in the 1960s and the 1970s, when scholars wondered how we could produce enough food for a rapidly growing global population. Brought to the fore with the publication of the book, “The Population Bomb,” by Paul R. Ehrlich i … | Continue reading
How did mineral evolution shape our planet? Robert Hazen, a renowned mineralogist, shares his fascinating insights into the co-evolution of minerals and life on Earth. Science has shown us that the universe started with a mere few dozen minerals, and those have since evolved into … | Continue reading
One of the most important rules in all of physics is the equivalence between mass and energy, first put forth by Einstein over 100 years ago: E = mc². Perhaps most famously, this is the process at play inside all stars like the Sun: where light elements get fused into heavier one … | Continue reading
Support for universal basic income (UBI) has grown so rapidly over the past few years that people might think the idea appeared out of nowhere. In fact, the idea has roots going back hundreds or even thousands of years, and activists have been floating similar ideas with graduall … | Continue reading
From The Techno-Humanist Manifesto by Jason Crawford. Subscribe to Jason’s Substack here. Introduction: The Present Crisis Never has humanity been so powerful, and at the same time so distrustful of our power. We live in an age of wonders. To our ancient ancestors, our mundane ro … | Continue reading
If you’re a band of hunter-gatherers entering a new land, you don’t move in straight lines — you progress in a pattern called “Lévy walks”. Where you go, and how quickly, is determined by the lay of the land, and how it changes over time. Sahul, before it shrank and fragmented Th … | Continue reading
The poet Alexander Pope said to be human is to err. Pretty soon, to be human will mean to be using AI in some capacity. When the history books are written, 2024 will be considered the year that AI reached maturity. The original version of ChatGPT debuted a year and a half ago, an … | Continue reading
If there’s one rule that most people know about the Universe, it’s that there’s an ultimate speed limit that nothing can exceed: the speed of light in a vacuum. If you’re a massive particle, not only can’t you exceed that speed, but you’ll never reach it; you can only approach th … | Continue reading
All throughout the Universe, black holes abound in great numbers and with impressive masses. On the one hand, black holes are known to arise from the corpses of stars, and are seen with orbiting companions, often emitting X-rays, and have also been discovered by inspiraling and m … | Continue reading
The concept of feedback often conjures negative premonitions of lectures, reprimands for honest mistakes, and uncomfortable performance appraisals. Anxiety, even dread, isn’t uncommon on either side of the conversational table. Such fear stems, in part, from the perception that f … | Continue reading
In the Western world, parents are urged to talk to their infants soon after they’re born — and to keep talking to them. Chat about everyday things, read books, tell stories, sing songs, Australia’s Raising Children Network recommends. This advice didn’t come out of nowhere. Decad … | Continue reading
One evening in August 2020, I prepared to leave my home in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California, not at all sure it would be there when I returned. Fierce lightning storms had caused wildfires to break out across the county, and for more than two weeks I watched the fires comin … | Continue reading
It’s one of the most well-accepted ideas in the Universe, and yet one of the most controversial: the notion of dark matter. Here in the Solar System, the Sun and planets are enough to explain all of the gravitational effects that we see: simply use the law of General Relativity a … | Continue reading
In 1785, a 25-year-old student at Cambridge University named Thomas Clarkson participated in a Latin essay competition about the immorality of slavery. Raised in a sheltered, upper-class environment, Clarkson knew little of the practice at the foundation of the British Empire’s w … | Continue reading
Fad diets come and go, but one appears to have staying power: intermittent fasting. Roughly one in 10 Americans were estimated to have practiced it in 2023. Interest in the eating strategy, as indicated by Google searches, picked up in 2011 and has remained elevated since. One co … | Continue reading
I was a kid in the 1970s. When the radio was on, we would get some ABBA, some T-Rex or some Boney M. But every now and again, on some pirate station we managed to find, we would blast the Sex Pistols, The Clash or The Stranglers. I had seen punks with their Mohicans and safety-pi … | Continue reading
Are our current school systems stifling learning that matters? Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a professor of education, psychology, and neuroscience at the University of Southern California, says yes. According to Immordino-Yang, our education system focuses too much on memorizing fa … | Continue reading
On the scale of the Universe, humanity isn’t even a speck. This vertically oriented logarithmic map of the Universe spans nearly 20 orders of magnitude, taking us from planet Earth to the edge of the visible Universe. Each large “mark” on the right side’s scale bar corresponds to … | Continue reading
This is T-Minus, where Freethink’s Kristin Houser breaks down the biggest developments in space, from new rocket launches to discoveries that advance our understanding of the universe and our place in it. Humanity is reaching new heights in space exploration. Make sure you’re par … | Continue reading