Reading Time: 2 minutes Perhaps the greatest question driving science—and human thought in general—is the mystery of origins. This question has manifested itself in myriad shapes and sizes: our fascination with the Big Bang, the birth of our Earth, the evolution of our own species, and even our own individual genealogies. Especially as many have turned away from religion—the […]
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Posted inEvolution
Surprise! The Nobel goes to evolutionary sciences, not COVID research
Reading Time: 4 minutes Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo joined a rare group this morning: not just of Nobel Prize winners, but of “family Nobels”. His father, Karl Sune Detlof Bergström, shared the 1982 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Bengt I. Samuelsson and John R. Vane, for work related to local-tissue hormones, or “prostaglandins”. Forty years later, that award went solely […]
Posted inSpace
NASA’s DART shows the explosive power of astronomical collaboration
Reading Time: 2 minutes On September 26th, the clickbait-able happened: NASA smashed a spacecraft going 14,000 mph into an asteroid larger than the Washington Monument. This was intentional, the years-long result of careful planning, engineering, and worldwide collaboration that constituted the Double Asteroid Redirection Test. What was surprising to scientists was just how spectacular DART’s impact with its target […]
Posted inHealth
Is total abstinence the only approach to addiction recovery?
Reading Time: 3 minutes We’ve learned a thing or two about addiction since AA’s Big Blue Book was published in 1939. Giving yourself over to a ‘higher power’ and avoiding the subject of your addiction forever is not the only way toward recovery.
Posted inSpace
Juno mission snags first close-up of Europa in 22 years
Reading Time: 3 minutes On January 3, 2000, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft passed just 218 miles over the surface of Europa, and gave us our last close-up data of Jupiter’s frozen moon for 22 years. Galileo’s overall tour of the Jovian moons had offered plenty of food for thought: A magnetic field for Ganymede! Volcanic activity on Io! And on […]
Posted inClimate Crisis
‘Only YOU can save the grid’ is not enough
Reading Time: 3 minutes At 5:45 pm on September 6th, Californians’ phones screamed with an emergency text: Conserve energy now to protect public health and safety. Extreme heat is straining the state energy grid. Power interruptions may occur unless you take action. Over the next few hours, millions of individuals across the Golden State unplugged cars and appliances, adjusted […]
Posted inArt
Are AI art programs ripping off human artists?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Artists erupted in protest when they learned that AI art engines like Stable Diffusion were trained on their copyrighted works. This revelation has ignited a debate about the meaning of fair use.
Posted inScience
When it comes to asteroid danger, gravity’s not so attractive
Reading Time: 2 minutes Sorry, astrology haters. The rumors are true: humans are being pulled at by the gravity of all planets at all times. There is not a drop of evidence for these minuscule gravitational tugs as tools of personality formation nor as predictors of luck. Still, we are not the free-floaters we imagine ourselves to be, but […]
Posted inHealth
New studies implicate long COVID in type-1 diabetes and brain injury
Reading Time: 2 minutes We’re in a complicated season of the COVID-19 pandemic. While health officials struggle with messaging around prevention, and politicians are eager to call an end to the era, new data has been surging around the long term impacts of COVID-19. All year, we’ve been seeing reports about the uptick in type-1 diabetes among children who […]
Posted inClimate Crisis
The Scientist Rebellion: What will it take to get the world’s attention?
Reading Time: 8 minutes The Scientist Rebellion calls for more people “on the inside” to take up the struggle against government inaction. But where does the movement fit into broader climate change activism, and is its degrowth message enough?