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History and Society
In all the known Universe, Earth is the only planet known to have native life. What should guide us in expanding humanity beyond our world?
Trump may make America great again — just not in the way he had intended.
Follow the money and you'll follow history.
After drastic cuts to the NIH, the FDA, the NSF, and the DOE, NASA science faces down its smallest budget ever. All of society will suffer.
"Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms, like books written in a truly foreign language."
Perhaps no existential question looms larger than that of our ultimate cosmic origins. At long last, science has provided the answers.
From religious iconography to modern mysticism, the human aura has been a subject of fascination across centuries and cultures.
The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, was originally seen as a colossal mistake. This one image, taken in 1995, changed everything.
In theory, scientists could've produced a deadly virus that accidentally infected lab workers. In practice, we know that didn't happen.
In "Enough Is Enuf," Gabe Henry traces the history of simplified spelling movements and the lessons they teach us about language.
Planets can create nuclear power on their own, naturally, without any intelligence or technology. Earth already did: 1.7 billion years ago.
Pessimissts are never disappointed, but are they also kinder?
The most famous Hubble images show glittering stars and galaxies amidst the black backdrop of space. But more was captured than we realized.
Hugo-winning author Ken Liu explores what early cinema and Chinese poetry can teach us about AI's potential as a new artistic medium.
25 years ago, our concordance picture of cosmology, also known as ΛCDM, came into focus. 25 years later, are we about to break that model?
That Nietzsche quote might not mean what you think it does.
It's difficult to project a sphere onto a flat, two-dimensional surface. All maps of the Earth have flaws; the same is true for the cosmos.
The latest season of the "Revolutions" podcast blends history with science fiction to tell the story of the Red Planet's rise.
Americans have gone through three historic junctures like what we're witnessing today — and they happen on an uncanny 80-year cycle.
We understand many things about our Universe, and our home within it, extremely well. The number of stars in the Milky Way isn't among them.
Common knowledge says the maximum size of a PDF is as big as 40% of Germany — but that’s a gross underestimate.
The first in a series of short stories by the Hugo- and Nebula-winning author that inspired the cult hit "Pantheon."
Large, massive, rotating galaxies like the Milky Way are common today. So how could one form a mere ~2 billion years after the Big Bang?
Harmony and moderation make for a happier life.
Science writer Matt Ridley joins us to discuss how “Darwin’s strangest idea” makes us all a bit feather-brained (in a good way).
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
For centuries, even after we knew the Sun was a star like any other, we still didn't know what it was made of. Cecilia Payne changed that.
The latest from Peter Leyden's "The Great Progression: 2025 to 2050", an essay series published by Freethink.
In his book, "Birds, Sex and Beauty," Matt Ridley explores why learning isn't always nature versus nurture.
Someday, we'll look back and see a young galaxy forming stars for the first time. JADES-GS-z14-0, the farthest ever, isn't early enough.