Patients with amygdala damage rejected the widely accepted answer to the infamous "trolley problem," saying that it "hurts too much." | Continue reading
Sweet, bitter, salty, sour. These are the four basic tastes we were taught in grade school. But there is a fifth: umami. And it's everywhere. | Continue reading
Searching for dark matter, the XENON collaboration found absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Here's why that's an extraordinary feat. | Continue reading
In 200 years, the mortality rate for children under the age of five (per 1,000 live births) has dropped from 40% to 3.7%. | Continue reading
Trying to define pseudoscience with one line failed. One author says there are several types of nonsense, and a few ways to address them. | Continue reading
Personal branding is a popular prescription, but the traits that make brands useful to corporations stifle people's growth and development. | Continue reading
Even with only 12.5 hours of exposure time, James Webb's first deep-field image taught us lessons we've never realized before. | Continue reading
Before fame, Kurt Vonnegut wrote a master's thesis on the shapes of stories for the anthropology department at the University of Chicago. | Continue reading
With its very first deep-field view of the Universe now released, the James Webb Space Telescope has shown us our cosmos as never before. | Continue reading
When we started imaging the Universe with Hubble, every star had four "spikes" coming from it. Here's why Webb will have more. | Continue reading
It might seem like science and faith are at war, but the two have a historical synergy that extends back in time for centuries. | Continue reading
For the first time, an augmented reality contact lens was worn on the eye of a human subject. It has about 30x the pixel density of an iPhone. | Continue reading
From life on Earth to the planet itself, there are four ways our planet will actually experience "the end," no matter how we define it. | Continue reading
Naive realism is the tendency to assume that our view of the world is objective and accurate rather than subjective and biased. | Continue reading
1859's Carrington event gave us a preview of how catastrophic the Sun could be for humanity. But it could get even worse than we imagined. | Continue reading
In the Canaan religion, Yahweh was a lesser god, who was assigned the land of Israel. Here's how he became "God Almighty." | Continue reading
There’s an enormous evolutionary advantage for flamingos to stand on one leg, but genetics doesn't help. Only physics explains why. | Continue reading
Feeling pain helps us to avoid experiences or stimuli that harm us. So, why do so many people pursue things that will bring them pain? | Continue reading
Deaths of despair are skyrocketing in the U.S., while at the same time, they are falling in other wealthy countries. What are we doing wrong? | Continue reading
Forget billions and billions. When it comes to the number of galaxies in the Universe, both theorists' and observers' estimates are too low. | Continue reading
You've heard of Stephen Hawking. How about Renata Kallosh? Didn't think so. Why are some brilliant people called "geniuses," but not others? | Continue reading
A new science fiction novel does a masterful job of crafting a narrative from an idea long discussed in philosophy: Is the mind needed? | Continue reading
As viewed by the MeerKAT telescope, this radio view of the Milky Way blows away every other way we've ever seen our home galaxy. | Continue reading
Space is not the place to put waste, as it turns pretty much anything into a high-velocity projectile capable of causing incredible damage. | Continue reading
A next-generation LHC++ could cost $100 billion. Here's why such a machine could end up being massive waste of money. | Continue reading
Before World War I, medical experts treated the body as a sum of its parts. Conditions like wound shock called for a change in perspective. | Continue reading
Most potentially hazardous asteroids remain unidentified. NEO surveyor could change that, but only if it's funded, and soon. | Continue reading
A long-ridiculed theory about humankind's early leap of consciousness is revived. | Continue reading
Why is grandma so relaxed? Is it coping skills? Cognitive decline? A new study asks whether old age brings increased happiness, and why. | Continue reading
How psilocybin evolved has more to do with sending insects on terrifying trips than it does making Phish sound good. | Continue reading
Nostalgia is a happy remembrance of the past, yet it also leaves us feeling sad. Perhaps ironically, it can serve as a painkiller. | Continue reading
Alexa knows a lot about you. New research delves into how Amazon uses what it knows to market to you across the internet. | Continue reading
There is not just one sort of mind. Different sorts of minds can then be described in terms of what they can and can’t do. | Continue reading
OmnesViae is a modern route planner based on the roads of the Roman Empire. This might have been handy 2,000 years ago. | Continue reading
Graphene is insanely useful, but very difficult to produce — until now. | Continue reading
Here's why you might eat greenhouse gases in the future. | Continue reading
A Finn and a Spaniard walk into a bar... | Continue reading
The hyperloop would be a great idea for a completely flat planet. With topography and infrastructure, it's a very different story. | Continue reading
The only way we'd seen Venus's surface was to land on the planet or view it in infrared light. NASA's Parker Solar Probe proved otherwise. | Continue reading
Atomic clocks keep time accurately to within 1 second every 33 billion years. Nuclear clocks could blow them all away. | Continue reading
Searching for truth in unorthodox ways can be a valuable exercise. But Anatoly Fomenko's alternate world history is just plain weird. | Continue reading
A basement renovation project led to the archaeological discovery of a lifetime: the Derinkuyu Underground City, which housed 20,000 people. | Continue reading
It's just one of the workplace gender insights in a new study. | Continue reading
Life is possible because of asymmetries, such as an imbalance between matter and antimatter and the "handedness" (chirality) of molecules. | Continue reading
We take for granted that time is real. But what if it's only an illusion, and a relative illusion at that? Does time even exist? | Continue reading
Nanofabricators could create the Star Trek version of the future. Though they are physically plausible, can they actually be created? | Continue reading
Spirals, ellipticals, and irregulars are all more common than ring galaxies. At last, we know how these ultra-rare objects are made. | Continue reading
Njoya the Great not only produced a map of his kingdom but was able to secure some autonomy in an era of European colonialism. | Continue reading