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History & Society
Trace how culture, power, and ideas shape societies across time.
The Crab Nebula goes back to 1054, opening a window into our cosmic past. On July 4, 1054, Chinese astronomers recorded a “guest star” in the Taurus constellation. A ‘guest star’ […]
‘Reductio ad absurdum’ won’t help you in an absurd Universe. Throughout history, there have been two main ways humanity has attempted to gain knowledge about the world: top-down, where we […]
The definitive answer requires better, unbiased data. Despite all the advances that have occurred in human history, one extraordinary puzzle still remains right in our own backyard: we aren’t sure how […]
Are space and time real like atoms are, or is spacetime just a calculational tool? When most of us think about the Universe, we think about the material objects that […]
Of all the injustices in Nobel Prize history, her 1957 Nobel snub is the most egregious. One of the biggest scientific revolutions of the 20th century was the discovery of […]
The concept of ‘relativistic mass’ has been around almost as long as relativity has. But is it valid? No matter who you are, where you are, or how quickly you’re moving, […]
Thou shalt not conclude “aliens” from insufficient data. When it comes to what’s out there in this Universe, perhaps the only thing that’s greater than our cosmic ignorance is the […]
Avi Loeb says it’s aliens. Every other astronomer disagrees. Here’s why. In 2017, an astronomical event occurred that was unlike any other: for the first time, we observed an object that […]
Time always moves in the same direction, but what if the Universe were contracting? As we step forward in time, a number of things always seem to happen together. Objects […]
The night sky is already noticeably different, and bigger changes are ahead. For all of human history until the launch of Sputnik, the only objects in the night sky were naturally […]
A new survey, the DESI Legacy Imaging Survey, has found more lenses than all others put together. One of Einstein’s most revolutionary predictions is that mass bends light. During a […]
And can we devise an experiment to tell, even when we aren’t looking? One of the most bizarre aspects of quantum physics is that the fundamental entities that make up the […]
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 […]
For the cosmos, it’s all too easy being green. Stars come in a wide variety of colors, but never green. Stars form in a wide variety of sizes, colors and masses, […]
It’s that the Universe can be understood at all. Don’t deafen yourself to its lessons. In a nutshell, 2020 has been a unique year in human history. For the first time […]
A single lifetime is more than enough to take you to the limits of the Universe. Right now, there are only three things limiting how far our spacecrafts can take […]
The first COVID-19 vaccines are here. So are the anti-vaxxers. Over the past year, most of us have learned more about coronaviruses than we ever thought we’d need to know. […]
After a wait of 397 years in orbit, we’re finally getting a truly ‘Great’ Conjunction. Recently, December 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn finally met. Looking towards the southwest skies from […]
We have been rejecting science for far too long. We all need to embrace it. For as long as human civilization has existed, those societies that have embraced science have had […]
And what can it teach us about our Solar System’s earliest days? In many ways, astronomy is unique among the sciences. In every other field, you have the ability to design […]