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Science
‘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 newest record-setting quasar houses an enormous black hole. No one knows how. In every scientific field, we’re always on the lookout for whatever new discovery might reveal what’s currently beyond […]
There are many things on large scales that also appear on small scales. But is the Universe truly a fractal? If you take a look at the structures that form in […]
It’s 92 billion light-years wide after just 13.8 billion years. And that’s just fine. If there’s one rule that people know about how fast things can move, it’s that there’s a […]
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 […]
If the multiverse is real, where does all the energy for it come from? One of the biggest scientific puzzles, even given our knowledge of the Big Bang, is to understand […]
They’re not just a theoretical prediction of quantum gravity. They should be detectable, too. The Universe, if you look at it closely and carefully enough, is fundamentally quantum in nature. […]
Known as the ‘North Star,’ Polaris won’t stay that way forever. Planet Earth spins a full 360°, about its axis, every 24 hours. The Earth in orbit around the Sun, with […]
Halley’s comet only visits every ~76 years, but its meteors arrive twice each year. The most famous comet of all — Halley’s comet — returns to our inner Solar System every ~76 years. Halley’s comet […]
Despite the claims of one of Earth’s newest Nobel Laureates, the data doesn’t lie. One of the greatest scientific successes of the past century was the theory of the hot Big […]
Even in the most exotic scenario imaginable, they still can’t remain stable in the Earth’s interior. It’s well known among scientists that if you submit even the most nonsensical paper […]
There are only 3 populations of stars, but “generations” is a more complex question. When we look out at the stars in the Universe, we classify them into three different […]
The view is different for each of us, but this perspective unites us all. From anywhere on Earth, the entire sky rotates a full 360° every 24 hours. From Earth, star […]
The pendulum didn’t tick right when they brought it here: the start of a fascinating story. For nearly three full centuries, the most accurate way that humanity kept track of […]
There was less than a 2 second delay between gravitational waves and light, but that’s incredibly meaningful. There’s an important rule in relativity that — as far as we know — all objects must […]
It’s fundamentally different from space. Here’s how. Here’s a question that most of us have been asked at some point in our lives, “what’s the shortest distance between two points?” By […]
Everything is being driven apart. But there’s hope of reaching what’s currently so far away. For the first 7.8 billion years, the Universe unfolded exactly as scientists would have expected in […]
For the first time in many years, there’s currently a comet visible to the naked eye in Earth’s night sky: comet NEOWISE. For the first time in many years, there’s currently […]
The Standard Model and General Relativity can’t be all there is. But how will we discover what lies beyond them? One of the biggest problems with physics is that, apart from […]
There’s a lot left to understand, ponder, and investigate. And there always will be. For hundreds of thousands of years — nearly all of human history — we had no definitive answers to some of […]
It contains more water than all the Great Lakes combined, and the science of our planet explains why. Although practically all of Earth’s human population lives on dry land, our surface […]
Nothing in the Universe can travel faster than the speed of light. So how does space itself do it? One of the fundamental rules we all learn in physics — set forth by […]
The origin of the 3rd element on the periodic table was one of the great cosmic mysteries. We just solved it. How did we form the elements that pervade the Universe […]
There’s some amazing science happening at the South Pole, but some very grandiose claims being made. What’s actually going on? For some of us, the idea of parallel Universes spark our […]
Extraterrestrial life should arise fairly easily. But intelligence is another matter entirely. Planet Earth has been around for the past 4.5 billion years or so: about the last third of […]
They say that seein’ is believin’. But everything we see has to have a scientific explanation. When you look at the Sun on a day where there’s a clear sky, […]
It should be just as sticky (or non-sticky) as normal matter. Here’s how we know. Not only here on Earth, but everywhere in the Universe that we look, we find structures […]
The dream of an ‘Earth-like’ planet showcases our astrobiological ignorance. Over the past decade, our understanding of what planets exist around stars other than our own has exploded. The number […]
All stars will eventually die. But we’ve never seen ones die like this before. When you look up at the sky, most of the points of light we see appear to […]
We’re not made out of the densest elements, but we’re the densest planet nonetheless. Here’s why. Of all the planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids and more in the Solar System, only […]