How to destroy an Alderaan-sized planet. “What’s that star?It’s the Death Star.What does it do?It does Death. It does Death, buddy. Get out of my way!” –Eddie Izzard It’s one […]
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Is there a limit to how small a length can be? Image credit: Sabine Hossenfelder. Good ideas start with a question. Great ideas start with a question that comes back […]
Recently a good friend told me over a pint in our local pub that he hadn’t been able to sleep a wink for two nights. He’d been left traumatised by […]
A comet that’s never crossed Earth’s orbit might lead to the most spectacular sky show in years! “I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather be a superb meteor, […]
The most advanced Martian rover can be yours… in LEGO form! “Earth as an ecosystem stands out in the all of the universe. There’s no place that we know about that […]
Washed out by the full Moon on any other night, the lunar eclipse makes this one visible tonight! “All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become […]
Don’t read this blog post. Definitely don’t read it to the end. Didn’t I tell you not to read this blog post? You’re still doing it… We can laugh at […]
Gravity is a hard force to overcome, but some worlds get an unlikely assist that makes it all too easy. “Some prophecies are self-fulfillingBut I’ve had to work for all of […]
Is running up an inclined treadmill the same, physically, as running up an actual mountain? Here’s what science has to say. “Nothing worth having was ever achieved without effort.” -Teddy Roosevelt […]
How the last open cluster ever discovered by Messier himself still holds some amazing secrets and wonder more than 200 years after its discovery. “The journey is difficult, immense. We […]
If you had never heard of global warming before, how would you figure out whether it’s happening? “There is no question that climate change is happening; the only arguable point […]
No snark, no sarcasm, no judgement, just the genuine, honest answers to 22 creationist messages. “In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; […]
The modern dictator needs only to become a client-state to Russia or China (or to be Russia or China), and there is nothing he can’t get away with. We members of open societies have the power to change that. All we need is the resolve.
When all the galaxies, stars, gas, dust, dark matter and all the other forms of matter and radiation are summed together, its energy still pales in comparison to dark energy. […]
It was the most promising idea for where new physics might lie. Now that the LHC data is in, is it dead? “The revolution is not an apple that falls when […]
We normally think of the Big Bang as the very beginning of our Universe, but we now know the story goes back even before it. Here’s how. “The aim of science […]
The mechanism for changing your mindset through messaging is the same as for changing a physical behavior: a targeted and limited resolution practiced relentlessly until it becomes automatic.
A disquieting paper has been published in the journal Criminal Justice Ethics, that suggests the decisions of forensic scientists are being influenced by payments for convictions. The authors Roger Koppl […]
Last week, I invited a few friends to come together and talk about Bitcoin. The conversation was wide ranging (read: ill-organized), but interesting. Three key topics emerged out of the […]
A few months ago I posted a piece which has become my most popular blog post by quite a landslide.The postcovered various techniques for learning and looked at the empirical […]
Ramez Naam looks at the power of innovation to overcome natural resource and environmental challenges.
Scott Barry Kaufman (@sbkaufman) is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology at NYU, co-founder of The Creativity Post, Scientific American blogger, and a friend. He is also the author of Ungifted: Intelligence […]
The feeling of certainty might be our default setting. We spend most of our mental life confirming our opinions, even when those opinions involve complex issues. We believe we understand […]
Very few countries allow direct-to-consumer advertising by drug companies, but in those that do (New Zealand, Canada, and the U.S.), the medicine-buying public has been brainwashed to believe that mental […]
Can the study of art history stop looking like ancient history itself? Can it transcend the old approaches and embrace the digital world? As digitized as art history has become […]
Fellow pseudonymous neuroblogger Neuroskeptic(to whom I owe a great deal in inspiration) has published a fantastic piece in Trends in Cognitive Sciences ($) on the benefits to science of anonymity. Last November Neuroskeptic became […]
First things first – I’m not a doctor, but the surprise new rules issued by the GMC (the British regulator for doctors) still worry me. Not just because I might perhaps one day […]
Last week, voters in Los Angeles County passed a referendum requiring male actors in adult films to wear condoms in scenes depicting vaginal or anal intercourse. Measure B was an […]
The New York Times reports that an MIT statistics professor has found that flying on a commercial jet has never been safer. Not that it was ever that much […]
Update (Jan, 2014): Amir’s patent application (search for no. 12/743357) has been rejected due to prior art by Mathews and MacLeod. Update (Feb, 2013): Following this blog post Amir corrected two […]