Addicks and Barker Reservoirs are swaths of placid Texas prairie, wetland, and forest straddling I-10 where it hits Highway 6, about 20 miles west of downtown Houston. But that’s not how nature sees them. To nature, those two open spaces […]
Listen, you’re kinda spooked about the rise of artificial intelligence, and I get that. It’s a tremendously powerful technology that promises to transform the very nature of work, inevitably leading to the automation of certain white-collar jobs. Like maybe mine, […]
It's Halloween time. For many, this time of the year means there are lots of cool costumes. For others, it's all about the candy. Now, I'm not a big fan of candy—but I am a big fan of analyzing stuff. […]
Humans can do things. Awesome things. Case in point: this human, named Aaron Cook. Cook can do some serious tumbling (just check out his YouTube channel), but he can also do something extremely difficult—a standing double back tuck (backflip). I […]
It wasn’t just that people were getting sick—it was who. And how many. Hepatitis A is a viral disease that primarily attacks the liver, and if it gets serious—as it can in the elderly and immune-compromised people—it can be fatal. […]
The most formal manifestation of the scientific consensus on climate change is an organization called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Headquartered in Geneva, under the aegis of the United Nations, it coordinates the volunteer efforts of several thousand scientists, […]
Here’s a depressing number for you: 12. Just 12 percent of engineers in the United States are women. In computing it’s a bit better, where women make up 26 percent of the workforce—but that number has actually fallen from 35 […]
When Etienne Schneider became Luxembourg's minister of the economy in 2012, one of his first trips abroad was to NASA’s Ames Research Center. It might have seemed strange for the tiny state's money man to solicit meetings with cosmic researchers, […]
The way the Nobel Committee tells it, the story of this year’s physics prize begins like a certain 1970s space opera. “Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, two massive black holes engaged […]
What happens when you see bad physics in the world? Does it make you angry? Does it make you laugh? Do you have to hold back a tidal wave of "well, actuallys" because of the overwhelming wrongness? Some might feel […]