Today, our observable Universe extends for 46 billion light-years in all directions. But early on, things were much smaller. There are few things we can conceive of that are as mind-bogglingly […]
Search Results
You searched for: S D
New research sees dogs checking a North-South axis on their way home.
Physicists sure do give counterintuitive names to the things they find. Most of us are confounded by the idea of relativity when we first encounter it. Objects don’t just move through […]
“For decades, a national anti-cruelty law was a dream for animal protectionists. Today, it is a reality.”
A new report calls on the departments of certain scientific fields to double the number of black students by 2030.
“They” has taken on a not-so-new meaning lately. This earned it the scrutiny it needed to win.
Electron-positron or proton-proton colliders are all the rage. But the unstable muon might be the key to unlocking the next frontier. If you want to probe the frontiers of fundamental […]
The FAA is not amused by flame-throwing drones.
If all forms of energy experience gravitation, then why does dark energy make the expansion accelerate instead of slow down? Of all the revolutionary discoveries that we’ve made about the Universe, […]
Sobering accounts from one of the most pivotal battles in world history.
And does it require the idea of ‘negative gravity’ in order to work? The biggest question that we’re even capable of asking, with our present knowledge and understanding of the Universe, […]
We’re living longer than ever, but few of us will save enough to afford this historical boon.
How do you overcome the tension between autonomy and solidarity?
It’s true that we have a thermodynamic arrow of time, and entropy always increases. But that can’t explain what we perceive. One of the enormous conceptual ideas that came along […]
With tens of thousands of satellites requiring AI-control to avoid collisions, a single solar flare could everything. Over the next few years, the night sky and the volume of space […]
Stronger than the LHC and faster than anything except light, the world’s cleverest particle detector sees the particles we could never create on Earth. It might be true that there’s an […]
The campaign promise could only become law if the Labour Party wins the general election in December.
Living 150 years sounds great… till you consider the effects on population.
And how cutting just $1 billion per year in funding from NASA’s budget would be a catastrophe for science. When you think of the great cosmic beyond and what we know […]
From ultra-realistic graphics to more intelligent A.I. characters, the 2020s will bring some mind-bending video games.
Scientific surprises are often how science advances. But more often than not, they’re just bad science. When you’re a scientist, getting an unexpected result can be a double-edged sword. The best […]
It isn’t just a day that comes every four years; it’s everything we need to keep our calendar aligned with Earth’s orbit. Once every four years, at least under most circumstances, […]
A close encounter with cosmologist James Peebles encouraged me in my scientific career.
▸
with
If we could see in three dimensions instead of two, we’d never have thought otherwise. Perhaps the most famous sight of a dying star is the Ring Nebula, discovered in […]
The farther away they get, the smaller distant galaxies look. But only up to a point, and then they get magnified. Here’s how. Intuitively, we all know that when we see […]
Venice’s mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, said the city was “on its knees.”
It’s been called the biggest conundrum in all of cosmology, and recent measurements just add to the confusion. One of the most puzzling facts about the Universe is that different […]
Can we ever be really sure we’ve learned everything about nature?
100+ years ago, General Relativity came along, and Einstein gave the Universe a cosmological constant. Here’s why that was a mistake. Back in the 17th century, Isaac Newton put forth the […]
It doesn’t matter where you’re from — music is an emotional powerhouse.