The Earth, to be clear, is round. Humanity has suspected this for millennia and known it for centuries. But the view that the Earth is a flat disc was the common belief before the 6th century CE, and…

“Each year, Space Science Week at the National Academies of Science brings together leaders across the space science disciplines to explore the latest developments and discuss the future of the…

Dodo Birds by Daniel EskridgeTwo dodo birds—one warm brown like sun-baked coconut husk, the other a pale, ghostly white with hints of grey—stand beak-deep in the shallows of a river that winds like a…

The “Whale” (NGC 4661) and the “Hockey Stick” (NGC 4656/57) are, with NGC 4627, a wonderful group of interaction galaxies: we are pleased to share here our image with you. The image above comes…

We share here a detailed image of the famous “Crab Nebula” (Messier 1), likely the most famous supernova remnant in our Milky Way. We also show how it expanded in almost 20 years. The...…

Kacia Julius was paralysed a year ago. Now she’s microdosing psilocybin, and her legs are moving. Here’s what the science says about why. There is a video going viral on Instagram that is…

"Our home planet is struggling with a record energy imbalance, which is warming oceans to unprecedented levels, making weather more extreme and threatening health and food supplies." How we react…

The pharmaceutical giant Novartis has reached a legal settlement with the family of Henrietta Lacks, the woman whose cells, taken from the tumour from which she died in 1951 in a Baltimore hospital,…

The 'clean' green energy boom rests on dirty secrets, says Chris Morrison – from toxic lithium mining in Indonesia to rare earth waste in China, the costs keep piling up. The post Lid Lifted on the…

As we get into the potential use of technology, my mind goes back to a story our litterature teacher had us read from: Successful freezing of mr Moro . There is an picture of a man being frozen in a…

stokes shift

On 23 March 1989, an asteroid bigger than an aircraft carrier, traveling at 74,000 km/h, passed through Earth’s orbit less than 640,000 km away. It did not impact the earth and life as we know…

I wanted to share some articles that challenge an assumption that I've had about depopulation. Conventional wisdom suggests that human activity has negative environmental effects. This is somewhat…

In the 1990s, Dr. Eugene Podkletnov drew international attention with a rotating superconductor that appeared to weaken gravity. The headlines faded, but his pursuit of gravity control did not. Over…

How camera works TIL how a camera works What is a pinhole camera? #Science

Chapter 12 - By Contradiction Portent There is no shortage of proofs that quantum nonlocality cannot be used to send superluminal signals. Eberhard’s paper of 1989 is probably the definitive…

After weeks of stable, unseasonably warm spring-like weather in many parts of Europe, Mother Nature is preparing to deliver a sharp reminder that winter isn’t…

70sscifiart:ALTHere’s a nice big version of the 1978 Don Davis cover for Carl Sagan’s The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence! Big thank you to art blogger…

It is now officially spring, and a good time to check on how unusual this winter has been. Meteorologists often do so by reviewing conditions over the water year (October-now), and I will do the…

Our governments appear to be abandoning the fight to mitigate and adapt to climate change, largely fuelled by Donald Trump, who has declared the subject “a Chinese hoax.” The reality is…

They say it takes a village to raise a child. But I’ve been wondering recently what it takes to raise an independent scientist. Specifically, I’m thinking of the ‘valley of death’ between a postdoc…

In this video I explain why I think it’s wrong to believe that the speed of light is an impossible to overcome limit. I am afraid that this is the biggest mistake that physicists are making, that…

A computational five-compartment pharmacokinetic model built on published parameters suggests that daily oral levosimendan delivers higher and substantially more stable free drug exposure than the…

SpaceX leader, Elon Musk, spotlights electromagnetic mass drivers on the Moon in a March 21 presentation. Go to: https://x.com/i/status/2035572007983563217 Go to my earlier story – “Catapult to the…

Here’s the ever-credulous New York Times: A Big Night Light in the Sky? Start-Up Wants to Launch a Space Mirror. The company is seeking F.C.C. approval to test an idea to reflect sunlight to…

  Unlocking the Secret Box: Why Turbulence is Not Chaos, but a Symphony of Primes Alexander Migdal Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ alexandermigdal.com “God does not play dice…

Is science our new religion? Is evolution our new doctrine? Are we meant to accept constant change in evidence quietly? Is a meaning to life offered in our scientific approach? Does science…

Clear camera work and the type of tornado not obscured by rain, etc. Hard to believe 4 people lived through that.   The 3rd tornado was the longest and most destructive and touched down between…

The 441st person to fly above Earth's atmosphere and first to earn U.S. commercial astronaut wings in the process, Mike Melvill died Thursday (March 19) at the age of 85. He was pilot of Scaled…

So what if we poison and scorch the Earth? A stable climate and healthy biosphere is for suckers.

THE CHINESE socio-political system differs from our own. From the perspective of the topic of this conference, here is the most salient distinction: the Chinese system has a telos. The Chinese…

Rebecca Solnit: Climate change is caused by many human actions, and the solutions are likewise manifold: change how we design our residences, towns and cities, transit systems, agriculture, land…

Greatest living human mathematician Terence Tao said this in an interview with Dwarkesh Patel:I’m not sure nowadays that hypothesis generation is the bottleneck anymore. Science has changed in the…

Tessera produces global land-cover embeddings at 0.1-degree resolution, roughly 11 km square at the equator. For each year and each grid tile, there is a directory containing NumPy files of the…

Today, while skimming through my Scripta Mathematica volume files, I discovered the poem ” Ode to an Exponential Curve” by Elmer Brill. The poem was published in Issue 2 Volume 6 of…

Asteroid mining will play a critical role in building the trillion dollar space economy. That’s the visionary mission of Los Angeles – based TransAstra. To make that quest real, the group is…

There’s a long history of work arguing that science is value‑laden and involves evaluative judgements. But what sorts of values and evaluative thinking are involved? I read an analysis by Zina Ward…

On one side of the world the US and Israel are pursuing an ill-conceived attack on Iran that has hugely impacted the flow of fossil fuel in the region. This is already having a grim impact on daily…

Robert Trivers, 1943-2026, in Jamaica, where I interviewed him in 2017. He sent me this undated photo. HOBOKEN, MARCH 21, 2026.  Evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, in the news lately because…

The napkin ring problem concerns finding the volume of a solid after a hole has been drilled into a sphere: Take a sphere of radius r and drill out a hole along a diameter so the remaining shape has…

An international correspondent who would like to remain anonymous writes: I just read your blog post on autism junk science. I am a researcher focusing on autism. The post reminded me of two studies…

There's a new essay in the journal Theory and Society and it's concerned for the state of, and future of, the social sciences. It's got " evolutionary lens " in the title and it's by Gad Saad (about…

Pacific island populations are shaped by people movements, more than is the case for most countries in the world. Ease of migration—because of history, culture or international…

During this period, the moon will reach its first quarter phase on Wednesday March 25th. At that time, the half-illuminated moon will lie 90° east of the sun and will set near 03:00. This weekend the…

On tech debt, empathy for old systems, slowing down when life gets too loud, SUFI collaboration and a new project at the intersection of software and nuclear physics.

Magicicada periodical cicadas are categorized into broods (see brood chart). Each brood has a unique 17 or 13-year interval of time where cicadas hatch, burrow into soil, tunnel underground feeding…

There has always been a close connection between Hawaii and Washington, and that relationship was on display over the past few days. Kona does not kid around A strong Kona storm, with powerful,…

Upon learning of the death of his lifelong friend Michele Besso, Einstein wrote … Nun ist er mir auch mit dem Abschied von dieser sonderbaren Welt ein wenig vorausgegangen. Dies bedeutet nichts.…

Our latest Spotlight is authored by Matt Peters and focuses on the World of Viruses/Biology of Human website and its educational comics and graphic novels. Tags: bacteria, COVID-19, foot and mouth…