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Do they have real, observable effects, or are they merely calculational tools?

Often viewed as a theoretical, calculational tool only, the Lamb Shift proved their existence. If you spend enough time listening to theoretical physicists, it starts to sound like there are […]

Biologists use commonly-found insects that engage in cannibalism to prove a key evolutionary concept.

What we’ve seen isn’t necessarily what we get, but the most common world doesn’t look like ours. There’s a very common myth out there in astronomy: the idea that the Sun […]

How different people react to threats of violence.

And a combination of all three might take us farther than ever. If you want to see the farthest objects in the Universe, you have to know not only where to […]

If a large asteroid strikes Earth, it has the potential to release an enormous amount of energy, leading to local or even global catastrophes. The strike that led to the […]

Without these two elements, we’re doomed to fail. In this day and age, it’s virtually impossible to have sufficient expertise to figure out what the complete, comprehensive, scientifically validated truth surrounding […]

The first supernova ever discovered through its X-rays has an enormously powerful engine at its core. It’s unlike anything ever seen.

Science can teach us so much about our planet, but something more must compel us to take care of it. If you want to understand our planet, the best way to […]

Snakes and mammals share common genetic building blocks necessary for producing venom.

By the end of the decade, we may discover one million black holes. A large enough mass in a compact volume inevitably forms a black hole. Both inside and outside the […]

We’ve found our first ones! The question is: how did they survive? Over the past 2 years, an exciting development has finally arisen: scientists have measured a large number of small, […]

Ingenuity is remarkable. But these 5 exploration ideas are revolutionary. Telescopes are our initial tools for revealing and studying foreign worlds. Hubble images of Mars, particularly around the regions with […]

They’re not just a theoretical prediction of quantum gravity. They should be detectable, too. The Universe, if you look at it closely and carefully enough, is fundamentally quantum in nature. […]

Political partisanship might be a treatable condition.

Science was never the same after meeting ‘the particle who lived.’ Back in the early 1930s, there were only a few known fundamental particles that made up the Universe. If you […]

Is there actually anything deserving of the term AI?

Every observation out into deep space is also a look back in time. Whenever you observe an object, you aren’t viewing it in its present state. When one of Jupiter’s moons […]

Alzheimer’s has proved difficult to treat. But solving the mystery of this ultra-rare frontotemporal dementia may unlock new understanding.

If you go young, blue, and massive, you top out at 50,000 K. That’s peanuts! Surprise! The biggest, most massive stars aren’t always the hottest. Although its neighbor, Messier 42, […]

We used to think the Big Bang meant the universe began from a singularity. Nearly 100 years later, we’re not so sure.

Why are the rest masses of fundamental particles related like this? When it comes to the nature of matter in the Universe, the Standard Model describes the known elementary particles perfectly […]

The majority of the matter in our Universe isn’t made of any of the particles in the Standard Model. Could the axion save the day?

And what might we learn as we collect new, never-before-seen data? If you took one of history’s top scientists from 100 years ago and dropped them into today’s world, what […]

The past ~4 billion years have been an incredibly successful, unbroken run for life on Earth. The future won’t be nearly so bright.

If you’ve ever struggled with the strong force, this explanation is a life-saver. If you ask someone to think about some physical phenomenon that’s responsible for any sort of force […]

And could Earth-based life provide the seeds for biology elsewhere? Today, on Earth, there’s an enormous variety and diversity of life on our planet. Every single surviving lifeform appears, in […]

The expansion rate is dropping, but distant galaxies are accelerating. Here’s how. If you take a look at any galaxy in the Universe that isn’t gravitationally bound to our own, we’ve […]

Complex organisms and living worlds couldn’t exist without these transitions. You couldn’t make the Universe we have today if everything were always the same. Although many philosophically favored the idea […]