For hundreds of thousands of years — nearly all of human history — we had no definitive answers to some of the biggest existential questions we could formulate. How did humans come into existence on planet Earth? What are we made of, at a fundamental level? How big is the Univers … | Continue reading
A new mRNA flu vaccine provides “broad protection” from lethal challenges by a variety of flu viruses, researchers have announced. The animal study, published in Science, represents yet another step towards vaccinology’s holy grail: a universal flu vaccine. A new mRNA flu vacc … | Continue reading
Donut chain Krispy Kreme has had a rough year, but it has a plan to get profitable again — and it includes a $6 million investment in automated systems to frost, fill, and package its donuts. The challenge: Krispy Kreme’s shops are set up so that customers waiting in line can wa … | Continue reading
Astronomer Carl Sagan was a great science communicator, widely known for cowriting and hosting the original Cosmos television series. Also a prolific writer, Sagan in 1995 published the book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, which touches on a variety of t … | Continue reading
Rice farmers living in Sidoarjo Regency, Indonesia, awoke to a strange sight on May 29, 2006. The ground had ruptured overnight and was spewing out steam. In the following weeks, water, boiling-hot mud and natural gas were added to the mixture. When the eruption intensified, mud … | Continue reading
How memories are encoded, stored, and retrieved is the most intensively studied topic in neuroscience, and it is well established that a brain structure called the hippocampus plays a critical role in these processes. It is widely believed that memories are transferred to the p … | Continue reading
In the four years since an experiment by disgraced scientist He Jiankui resulted in the birth of the first babies with edited genes, numerous articles, books and international commissions have reflected on whether and how heritable genome editing – that is, modifying genes that w … | Continue reading
Most people want to be successful. It’s a powerful psychological driver, not only because we find self-worth in our achievements but also of the value society places on them. We’re infatuated by the concept, and no CEO, movie star, entrepreneur, or vaguely successful YouTuber can … | Continue reading
While the weather outside may indeed get frightful this winter, a parka, knit hat, wool socks, insulated boots and maybe a roaring fire make things bearable for people who live in cold climates. But what about all the wildlife out there? Won’t they be freezing? Anyone who’s walk … | Continue reading
You’ve probably seen Ernst Haeckel’s work, without realizing it. His illustrations of radiolarians, bat faces, mosses, crustaceans, mushrooms, hummingbirds, and other specimens are breathtaking — iconic to this day. He found extraordinary success in harnessing visual media to con … | Continue reading
There is no force in the Universe called progress. But there are plenty of natural forces that only seem to make it harder for us to make progress as a species, such as disease, the laws of entropy, and the dark sides of human nature. So, what pushes humanity forward in the face … | Continue reading
Our modern understanding of the relationship between work and boredom developed largely out of the Industrial Revolution. As the demand for factory labor increased, millions of people were forced to perform the same repetitive task for 12 hours a day, day after day, ad nauseum. T … | Continue reading
Boys and men are falling behind. This might seem surprising to some people — and maybe ridiculous to others — considering that discussions on gender disparities tend to focus on the structural challenges faced by girls and women, not boys and men. But long-term data reveal a cle … | Continue reading
You might think you’re an expert at navigating through city traffic, smartphone at your side. You might even hike with a GPS device to find your way through the backcountry. But you’d probably still be surprised at all the things that GPS — the global positioning system that unde … | Continue reading
Learning to navigate social relationships is a skill that is critical for surviving in human societies. For babies and young children, that means learning who they can count on to take care of them. MIT neuroscientists have now identified a specific signal that young children an … | Continue reading
Dogs have a long history alongside humans, giving them an amazing ability to read human cues. Dogs also possess an incredible sense of smell, which enables them to detect diseases, such as COVID and lung cancer, in humans from odor alone. Whether dogs’ capabilities extend to dete … | Continue reading
All of us, whenever we seek to understand something more deeply, run into an awkward situation: where we think we understand how something works, only to discover that we ourselves are misinformed. Sometimes it’s only about trivial matters that don’t impact our ability to accompl … | Continue reading
Andreas Fichtner strips a cable of its protective sheath, exposing a glass core thinner than a hair — a fragile, 4-kilometer-long fiber that’s about to be fused to another. It’s a fiddly task better suited to a lab, but Fichtner and his colleague Sara Klaasen are doing it atop a … | Continue reading
This past summer, a widespread drought across the United States lowered crop yields by as much as one-third as corn, wheat, barley and other plants suffered from too much heat and too little water. It’s a scenario that will likely become more common as climate change makes much o … | Continue reading
In 2020, close to 2,800 parents in the U.S. were forced to endure the unthinkable: Their beloved infant had suddenly passed away during the night, apparently without any clear cause. Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) had struck. SIDS is not a specific thing; it is a descriptor … | Continue reading
A curious phenomenon often occurs when astronauts travel to space and look out on our planet for the first time: They see how interconnected and fragile life on Earth is, and they feel a sudden responsibility to protect it. Astronaut Ron Garan experienced this so-called “overvie … | Continue reading
New research shows that mice lacking one subtype of serotonin receptor rapidly forget learned fear responses due to altered activity of nerve cells in the brain’s fear circuitry. The findings, published recently in the journal Translational Psychiatry, provide clues about how Pro … | Continue reading
For decades, the “next big thing” in terms of energy has always been nuclear fusion. In terms of sheer potential for power generation, no other energy source is as clean, low-carbon, low-risk, low-waste, sustainable, and controllable as nuclear fusion. Unlike oil, coal, natural g … | Continue reading
You do not "deserve" to be happy nor do you "have" to be. A meaningful, valuable life is just as much measured by duty, as happiness. | Continue reading
As we gain new knowledge, our scientific picture of how the Universe works evolves. This is a feature of the Big Bang, not a bug. | Continue reading
What makes someone hypersane? | Continue reading
Don’t take the prodigy pathway. Become a broad thinker instead. | Continue reading
The Universe gravitates so that normal matter and General Relativity alone can't explain it. Here's why dark matter beats modified gravity. | Continue reading
Pando is a stand of aspen in Utah that is 14,000 years old and weighs 12 million pounds. Humans threaten to end its long reign. | Continue reading
The next time you see your dog sniffing the pavement or another dog’s junk, you should let them. Here’s why. | Continue reading
From LED-equipped visors to transparent masks, these inventions aim to thwart facial recognition cameras. | Continue reading
Scientists are imperfect, and so are the members of the Nobel Committee. Here are a few of the worst Nobel Prizes ever awarded in science. | Continue reading
Amplifying the energy within a laser, over and over, won't get you an infinite amount of energy. There's a fundamental limit due to physics. | Continue reading
The "attention economy" corrupts science. What is valuable to one scientist or institution (like media attention) undermines public trust. | Continue reading
Or why I’m coming out as an impatient optimist. | Continue reading
In the fifth decade of life, our brain begins a radical "rewiring" that results in networks becoming more integrated and connected. | Continue reading
From here on Earth, looking farther away in space means looking farther back in time. So what are distant Earth-watchers seeing right now? | Continue reading
In our common experience, you can't get something for nothing. In the quantum realm, something really can emerge from nothing. | Continue reading
Finland's recent decline in international test scores has led many to question whether its education system is truly the best. | Continue reading
The drive would provide enough thrust for a spacecraft to travel near the speed of light using only electricity, says physicist Jim Woodward. | Continue reading
A pill's active ingredient can be absorbed quickly or slowly depending upon your body posture after taking it. | Continue reading
If you have an old TV set with the "rabbit ear" antennae, and you set it to channel 03, that snowy static can reveal the Big Bang itself. | Continue reading
Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love my tsundoku. | Continue reading
The whole isn't greater than the sum of its parts; that's a flaw in our thinking. Non-reductionism requires magic, not merely science. | Continue reading
Uploading your mind is not a pathway to immortality. Instead, it will create a possibly hostile digital doppelgänger. | Continue reading
A microbial organism pulls electricity from water in the air. | Continue reading
Proponents of transhumanism make big promises, such as a future in which we upload our minds into a supercomputer. Is this realistic? | Continue reading
Cryonics is the practice of freezing your body in the hope of resurrection by future medicine. Some pioneers met a fate grislier than death. | Continue reading