On February 2, a court in Moscow sentenced Putin critic Alexy Navalny to two years and eight months in jail. Russia’s most prominent critic has inspired massive protests that have shaken the country...
Humanosity
There are Many Good Ideas to Tackle Inequality – it’s Time We...
This is the final article in the Reclaiming the Fair Go series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the Sydney Democracy Network and the Sydney Peace Foundation to mark the awarding of the 2018...
These Five Countries are Conduits for the World’s Biggest Tax...
First came the Panama Papers, then the BahamasLeaks, and now it’s the Paradise Papers. Journalists continue to shed light on and raise a public outcry over the offshore financial...
‘Decarbonisation’ May be the Wrong Goal for Energy – Here’s Why
Electricity generated by nuclear power plants, wind turbines and solar panels results in negligible greenhouse gas emissions, even when their manufacture, construction and maintenance is taken into...
How the Super Rich Conquered London
Over cups of tea in his ramshackle London home, I chatted with a novelist. It felt a valuable opportunity, given his multiple fictional treatments of London, to discuss the city’s rapid changes that...
Who is More Powerful – States or Corporations?
Who holds the power in international politics? Most people would probably say it’s the largest states in the global system. The current landscape of international relations seems to affirm this...
Guns, Drones and Poison: the New Age of Assassination
Nobody has officially claimed responsibility for deploying the satellite-controlled machine-gun with “artificial intelligence” used to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen...
The Taliban Are Megarich – Here’s Where They Get The Money They...
The Taliban militants of Afghanistan have grown richer and more powerful since their fundamentalist Islamic regime was toppled by U.S. forces in 2001. In the fiscal year that ended in March...
Fragments of Energy – not Waves or Particles – may be the...
Matter is what makes up the universe, but what makes up matter? This question has long been tricky for those who think about it – especially for the physicists. Reflecting recent trends in physics...
This Unbelievable Research on Human Hibernation Could Get Us to...
Journeying to Mars is seldom out of the news these days. From Elon Musk releasing plans for his new rocket to allow SpaceX to colonize Mars to NASA announcing another rover as...
What it’s Like to Lose a Presidential Election?
The American public may have only recently found out who won the presidential election last month. But now they know that Republican Donald Trump hasn’t been elected to a second term and that...
Are Racism and Bigotry in our DNA?
Is bigotry in our DNA, a remnant of our fear of “the other” way back when that was necessary? If so, why do some battle with their instincts while others embrace them? Humans are the most...
This Century Will See Massive Shifts in the Global Population...
A lot of the predictions we hear about the future involve a hot, crowded planet, one where we need some serious science to figure out how to feed everyone and control rising global temperatures...
The Dark Side of Plant-Based Food – it’s more about money than...
If you were to believe newspapers and dietary advice leaflets, you’d probably think that doctors and nutritionists are the people guiding us through the thicket of what to believe when it comes to...
Could We live in a World Without Rules?
We all feel the oppressive presence of rules, both written and unwritten – it’s practically a rule of life. Public spaces, organisations, dinner parties, even relationships and casual conversations...
Airships Are No Longer a Relic of the Past; You Could Ride in...
As concern over climate change and rising temperatures grows, the airline industry is taking heat (pun intended). Flying accounts for 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions; that’s lower than...
This Startup Is Growing Sushi-Grade Salmon From Cells in a Lab
As the ills of factory farming become more pronounced, people are increasingly gravitating towards vegetarian or pescatarian diets. Besides producing a large percentage of our total greenhouse...
If a Robot Is Conscious, Is It OK to Turn It Off? The Moral...
In the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode “The Measure of a Man,” Data, an android crew member of the Enterprise, is to be dismantled for research purposes unless Captain...
AI Will Create Millions More Jobs Than It Will Destroy. Here’s...
In the past few years, artificial intelligence has advanced so quickly that it now seems hardly a month goes by without a newsworthy AI breakthrough. In areas as wide-ranging as speech...
The Scariest Things in the Universe are Black Holes and here are...
Each year Halloween is a time to be haunted by ghosts, goblins and ghouls, but nothing in the universe is scarier than a black hole. Black holes – regions in space where gravity is so strong that...