Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.In evolution, context is everything: Bacteria with neighbors… | Continue reading
Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.In evolution, context is everything: Bacteria with neighbors… | Continue reading
An insistent pattern has quietly taken hold in my household. I will order some consumer product online. The product will arrive. I… | Continue reading
It is up to authors to interpret the effect size in their study, and to show the mechanism through which an effect that is impossibly… | Continue reading
Last year news came that Indian billionaire Gautam Adani was set to exploit Australian coal reserves. The deal, The New York Times… | Continue reading
Errol Morris feels that Thomas Kuhn saved him from a career he was not suited for—by having him thrown out of Princeton. In 1972,… | Continue reading
I sometimes worry that many who would enjoy a scientific career are put off by a narrow and outdated conception of what’s involved.… | Continue reading
An insistent pattern has quietly taken hold in my household. I will order some consumer product online. The product will arrive. I… | Continue reading
I sometimes worry that many who would enjoy a scientific career are put off by a narrow and outdated conception of what’s involved.… | Continue reading
Last year news came that Indian billionaire Gautam Adani was set to exploit Australian coal reserves. The deal, The New York Times… | Continue reading
With suburbs, architects gave adults just what they wanted: Affordable houses with lawns and garages, homes where children can be… | Continue reading
Several years ago, I climbed Mt. Washington in Nevada to see the oldest complex life forms on Earth. Typically found at elevations… | Continue reading
The Simple Dutch Cure for StressJohn Loo / FlickrSince reading this November post, by Alice Fleerackers, I haven’t been able to… | Continue reading
What Impossible Meant to FeynmanWhen you are a young physics professor at Caltech, giving a lecture about a new type of matter you… | Continue reading
Several years ago, I climbed Mt. Washington in Nevada to see the oldest complex life forms on Earth. Typically found at elevations… | Continue reading
One of the greatest debates in the long history of astronomy has been that of exceptionalism versus mediocrity—and one of the great… | Continue reading
The universe is the grandest merger story that there is. Complete with mysterious origins, forces of light and darkness, and chemistry… | Continue reading
The universe is the grandest merger story that there is. Complete with mysterious origins, forces of light and darkness, and chemistry… | Continue reading
One of the greatest debates in the long history of astronomy has been that of exceptionalism versus mediocrity—and one of the great… | Continue reading
As a paleoclimatologist, I often find myself wondering why more people aren’t listening to the warnings, the data, the messages… | Continue reading
In 1976, Francis Crick arrived at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, overlooking a Pacific Shangri-La with cotton candy skies… | Continue reading
Describing his life, shortly before his death, Newton put his contributions this way: “I don’t know what I may seem to the world,… | Continue reading
Researchers found that people who set both superordinate and subordinate goals at New Year’s invested more effort into pursuing… | Continue reading
Researchers found that people who set both superordinate and subordinate goals at New Year’s invested more effort into pursuing… | Continue reading
There was little expectation that anything important would occur at the 1933 meeting of the American Physical Society, which began… | Continue reading
We start with the case of a woman who experienced unbearable tragedy. In 1899, this Parisian bride, Madame M., had her first child.… | Continue reading
The audience problem highlights a longstanding worry about robot consciousness—that outward behavior, however sophisticated, would… | Continue reading
Like countless so-crazy-it-just-might-work schemes, this one began with a gripe session. In the fall of 2011, Roberto Abraham and… | Continue reading
The audience problem highlights a longstanding worry about robot consciousness—that outward behavior, however sophisticated, would… | Continue reading
In 1976, Francis Crick arrived at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, overlooking a Pacific Shangri-La with cotton candy skies… | Continue reading
Like countless so-crazy-it-just-might-work schemes, this one began with a gripe session. In the fall of 2011, Roberto Abraham and… | Continue reading
There was little expectation that anything important would occur at the 1933 meeting of the American Physical Society, which began… | Continue reading
In 1976, Francis Crick arrived at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, overlooking a Pacific Shangri-La with cotton candy skies… | Continue reading
Physics is often baffling, but one principle seems rock-solid: the law of conservation of energy. The world contains this thing called… | Continue reading
In the mid-1990s, I studied mathematics. I wasn’t really sure just what I wanted to do with my life, but I was awed by the power… | Continue reading
Physics is often baffling, but one principle seems rock-solid: the law of conservation of energy. The world contains this thing called… | Continue reading
Avi Loeb doesn’t need to be a muckraker. As the head of the astronomy department at Harvard University, he sits in one of the most… | Continue reading
Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.These three objects illustrate the principles behind “spin,”… | Continue reading
On a warm day in April 2013, I was sitting in a friend’s kitchen in Paris, trying to engineer serendipity. I was trying to get my… | Continue reading
A lot of people don’t like the word “moist.” Several Facebook groups are dedicated to it, one with over 3,000 likes, New Yorker… | Continue reading
Hybridization, it turns out, plays a pivotal role in how life forms evolve. The tree of life may never look the same.Photograph by… | Continue reading
I’m trying to explain to Arthur I. Miller why artworks generated by computers don’t quite do it for me. There’s no human being… | Continue reading
Ross Goodwin has had an extraordinary career. After playing about with computers as a child, he studied economics, then became a speech… | Continue reading
Ross Goodwin has had an extraordinary career. After playing about with computers as a child, he studied economics, then became a speech… | Continue reading
Hybridization, it turns out, plays a pivotal role in how life forms evolve. The tree of life may never look the same.Photograph by… | Continue reading
I’m trying to explain to Arthur I. Miller why artworks generated by computers don’t quite do it for me. There’s no human being… | Continue reading
On a warm day in April 2013, I was sitting in a friend’s kitchen in Paris, trying to engineer serendipity. I was trying to get my… | Continue reading
In 1991, the multinational Old Mutual investment group approached the Zimbabwean architect Mick Pearce with an audacious assignment.… | Continue reading