Space exploration achieved several notable firsts in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, including commercial human spaceflight and returning samples of an asteroid to Earth. The coming year is...
Science
The Fascinating Story of Placebos – and Why Doctors Should Use...
Plato’s cure for headaches involved: a certain leaf, but there was a charm to go with the remedy; and if one uttered the charm at the moment of its application, the remedy made one perfectly well;...
SETI: New Signal Excites Alien Hunters – Here’s how we could...
The US$100m (£70m) Breakthrough Listen Initiative, founded by Russian billionaire, technology and science investor Yuri Milner and his wife Julia, has identified a mysterious radio signal that seems...
We Scanned the DNA of 8,000 People to see how Facial Features...
A new study reveals more than 130 regions in human DNA play a role in sculpting facial features. The nose is the facial feature most influenced by your genes. Understanding the link between specific...
The Quest to Revive Extinct Aurochs to Restore Ancient Lands
Rewilding and restoration of land often rely on the reintroduction of species. But what happens when what you want to reintroduce no longer exists? What if the animal in question is not only locally...
How to Live in Space: What we’ve Learned from 20 Years of the...
November 2 2020 marked 20 years since the first residents arrived on the International Space Station (ISS). The orbiting habitat has been continuously occupied ever since. Twenty straight years of...
5 Failings of the Great Barrington Declaration’s Dangerous Plan...
Good science and sound public health policy are needed to guide us through a pandemic that will likely continue throughout 2021. Public buy-in is essential for long-term adherence to effective public...
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...
AI Just Discovered a New Antibiotic to Kill the World’s Nastiest...
Penicillin, one of the greatest discoveries in the history of medicine, was a product of chance. After returning from summer vacation in September 1928, bacteriologist Alexander Fleming found a...
The New Science of Psychedelics: A Tool for Changing Our Minds
As our prosperity rises, our mental health is on the decline—and fast. Rates of depression, anxiety, suicide, addiction, and other psychological disorders have skyrocketed in recent years, and nobody...
Forget Exercise—These Mice Got Ripped With Gene Therapy
Trying to hack fitness is a multi-million-dollar industry; we’ve all seen at least one ad featuring a purported miracle product that claims it can make people lose weight and look great—without even...
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...
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...
NASA’s Plan to Build a Base Camp on the Moon Sounds Like Sci-Fi...
If we’re ever going to make Elon Musk’s vision of colonizing Mars a reality, we first need to figure out an essential component of the plan: how to get there. After all, it’s somewhere between 34 and...
The Eugenics Debate isn’t over – but we should be wary of...
Andrew Sabisky, a UK government adviser, recently resigned over comments supporting eugenics. Around the same time, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins – best known for his book The...
Inching Towards Abundant Water: New Progress in Desalination Tech
In early 2018, Cape Town, South Africa came dangerously close to being the world’s first major city to run out of water. People lined up for blocks to collect spring water. Stores sold out of...
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...
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...
Scientists Just Proved These Two Brain Networks Are Key to...
Consciousness is one of the greatest mysteries of the human species. Where and how does it originate? Why do we have it? Is it even real, or just an illusion? These questions aren’t just hard to...
Solar Power Stations in Space Could be the Answer to Our Energy...
It sounds like science fiction: giant solar power stations floating in space that beam down enormous amounts of energy to Earth. And for a long time, the concept – first developed by the Russian...