Science and Tech

Science and Tech

A clock, believed to be the first in America, showcased beside a book.
A clock, designed and built in Europe, ran hopelessly at the wrong rate when brought to America. The physics of gravity explains why.
A man in a white coat is analyzing positron emissions on two monitors.
Positron emission tomography (PET) scans use positrons — the antimatter equivalent of an electron — to locate cancer in the body.
bit vs qubit
Can quantum computers do things that standard, classical computers can't? No. But if they can calculate faster, that's quantum supremacy.
overview effect
When the average person has a "theory," they're just guessing. But for a scientist, a theory is the pinnacle of what we can achieve.
ring nebula hubble jwst nircam miri
The "Ring Nebula," known for almost 250 years, is so much more than a Ring. With JWST's capabilities, we're seeing more than ever before.
The biocentric earth floats amongst cosmic creatures in space.
Life in the supremely vast cosmos is incredibly rare. We need a new vision for our living planet and for ourselves.
A monkey engaging in gene therapy.
"They decreased their drinking to the point that it was so low we didn’t record a blood-alcohol level."
A green leaf peeking out of a white blind.
AI is helping us replace petrochemicals with natural enzymes.
antennae galaxies NGC 4038 4039
The Universe isn't just expanding, the expansion is also accelerating. If that's true, how will the Milky Way and Andromeda eventually merge?
A Copernican-inspired map of the world showcasing a central globe.
Despite the vast number of planets in the Universe, Earth's specific evolutionary history guarantees that its life forms — including humans — are utterly unique.
A painting of a man with a turban and a map.
The history of cartography might have been very different if the Latin version of Muhammad al-Idrisi's atlas had survived instead of the Arabic one.
The book cover 'the down and out universe' explores biocentrism on an orange background.
We are not the center of the Universe, but life is.
I polled today.
Predictive power has perverse, anti-democratic consequences. So be a good citizen and lie to election pollsters.
A picture of a roller coaster with broken metal structures against the backdrop of the sky.
Time to rewrite our understanding of structural engineering.
Oppenheimer on the left and Heisenberg on the right.
As the Manhattan Project headed for completion, German attempts to build a nuclear weapon had already been dismantled.
Edwin Hubble and Andromeda galaxy
The first observational evidence showing the Universe is expanding is 100 years old now: in 2023. Here's the story of its 100th anniversary.
NGC 5584 cepheid hubble
How fast is the Universe expanding? Two major methods disagree. New JWST data, just released, strengthens this Hubble tension even further.
A termite mound
Smarter building materials can control indoor temperatures without external power.
An artist's rendering of a spacecraft near an asteroid.
Whether you call it 10 quintillion, 10 million trillion, or 10 billion billion, it's a 1 followed by 19 zeroes.
A comparison of two rice plants focusing on their immunity.
The technology could yield "made-to-order resistance genes" to protect crops against pathogens and pests.
A tooth and a piece of wood juxtaposed in an unsettling manner.
A 1.5-million-year-old hominin bone shows signs that the victim was eaten by lions — and humans.
A man in a suit and tie is pointing to a quantum computer.
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Theoretical physics professor Michio Kaku outlines the evolution of computers from analog to digital and introduces quantum computers as the next frontier.
standard model structure
Some constants, like the speed of light, exist with no underlying explanation. How many "fundamental constants" does our Universe require?
A woman poses in front of the letter x in a black and white photo.
The use of the letter x as an unknown is a relatively modern convention.
A man exploring quantum computing in a room with red lights.
Nature may not allow us full access to the weirdness of quantum mechanics.
A person making medical breakthroughs by looking through a microscope.
Ethicist and doctor Simon Whitney argues that society's overly cautious approach to medical research is blocking breakthroughs.
Raisin bread expanding Universe
Two fundamentally different ways of measuring the expanding Universe disagree. What's the root cause of this Hubble tension?