How a scientist you never heard of made String Theory possible. Image credit: Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics, at http://aether.lbl.gov/bccp/dimensions.html. When he died on September 7, 2012, theoretical physicist Claud […]
Search Results
You searched for: S D
The nature of our Universe defies our intuition. That just might be the greatest thing of all. “I asked the Zebra,are you black with white stripes?Or white with black stripes?And […]
About three-quarters of Americans—74 percent, to be precise—believe in God. This 3-question quiz can help predict if you are likely to be among that majority.
June 6, 1944. Operation Overlord. D-Day. Seventy years later, relatively few survive who actually lived it. People around the world take advantage of their last opportunities to commemorate the anniversary with veterans in attendance.
To reduce or undo someone else’s power, observe carefully those who have it and how you’re helping them keep it. Then consider how to alter that pattern with the person in question.
“Nudge” policies are spreading across the globe because they supposedly offer a less expensive and more effective way to get people to make the “right” decisions. In the original formulation, such decisions are defined as those that people would like to have made, had they not been hobbled and blinkered at the time by irresistible irrationality.
How Worlds Thought in the 1960s to be Circling Barnard’s Star Turned out to be Illusions. Image via: http://www.wingmakers.co.nz/universe/extrasolar/Barnards.html. In this golden age of exoplanet discovery, it is hard to […]
ABC News correspondent Dan Harris discusses how mindfulness helped him recover from an on-air panic attack.
Why not install an adjustable ethics dial on self-driving cars? Because it’s a terrible idea, says Wired’s Patrick Lin, PhD, who is also director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University.
The observer changes everything, but what does that mean? “You can observe a lot by just watching.” –Yogi Berra In our everyday lives, things happen the way they happen, and whether […]
A dark period from the past of psychiatry risks being forgotten, we can’t allow that to happen.
Why quantum entanglement spooked Einstein his entire life. Image credit: Nature, October 2006 (vol 2 no 10). ‘Tis the season of ghouls, goblins, witches, demons, and things that go bump […]
The physics of one of the rarest and most spectacular sunset sights ever seen! Image credit: © Mila Zinkova / Creative Commons. “It does no harm to the romance of […]
I knew things weren’t going well when I rounded a bend on Ocean Parkway, a highway that slices through the eastern neighborhoods of Brooklyn on its way to Coney Island. […]
And, in general, how would you be able to tell? Image credit: Mahdi Zamani, via http://www.twanight.org/newTWAN/guests_photos.asp?ID=5001660. “When I was ten all I knew was that I hated the weird words […]
People in lab coats aren’t wizards, so why do we treat them as such? One writer argues that our botched understanding of science, and that we erroneously conflate it with truth, has led to myriad social problems.
How you get to work, and how long that journey takes, generally determine the level of satisfaction you have with your commute, according to British and Canadian researchers.
All meaning is relational (otherwise it’s potentially useless and unhealthy). That’s true for both senses of meaning, and Nozick’s “Pleasure Machine” shows why workable individualism must be relational. 1. Individualism’s […]
When you throw more fuel on the fire, why does it burn out in less time? Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Fir0002. “The light that burns twice as bright burns […]
It’s hard to imagine empathy being anything but beneficial. It has become one of the most championed mental states in the neuroscience age: the ability to feel what someone else is feeling and, if all goes well, extend a hand altruistically or compassionately.
How to Reverse Aging Enzymes like Telomerase and Resveratrol, though not the Fountain of Youth unto themselves, offer tantalizing clues to how we might someday soon unravel the aging process. […]
Will Self argues that crowdfunding is doomed. He says eventually the crowd will wise up that people are really just begging for money. His argument is based on someone who […]
It’s been 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang, but our observable Universe is much bigger than just 13.8 billion light years! Image credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, […]
“Regulation” need not be a dirty word. When new technologies emerge that shift the paradigms under which an industries operate, it’s important for legislative authorities to prudently adjust the rules without stifling further innovation.
When IBM Chief Accessibility Officer Frances West sat down at a recent screening of “Gone Girl,” she immediately realized that something was wrong. In the opening credits, there were “names […]
3.4 million people die each year from water-related diseases 99% of which occur in the developing world. To put things in more perspective, lack of access to clean water and sanitation […]
The last serious anti-Big Bang scientists went to their graves lamenting the lack of good alternatives. Here why there are none. Image credit: NASA / WMAP Science Team. “We were […]
Turns out that being nice to other people isn’t just good for the recipients of your kindness. According to the latest research, people who are generous and altruistic reap a […]
How close to you sleep to your mobile phone? Is it connected to a charger on your nightstand or do you have a pillow for it right next to yours?
Professional skateboarder Chris Cole explains how the sport channels a unique form of creativity that also contributes to the industry’s success as a whole.