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Enable Focus Mode A+ A++ 🌙 4 min read Home In the world of organic chemistry, some rules are taught as absolute boundaries. One of the most famous is Bredt’s rule, a guideline that has dictated the limits of molecular […]

Regional diversity in longevity trends in Western Europe

Enable Focus Mode A+ A++ 🌙 7 min read Home Authors: Florian Bonnet, Démographe et économiste, spécialiste des inégalités territoriales, Ined (Institut national d’études démographiques); Carlo Giovanni Camarda, Docteur, spécialiste des méthodes de prévision (mortalité, longévité, etc.), Ined (Institut national […]

Enable Focus Mode A+ A++ 🌙 4 min read Home In order to build the computers and devices of tomorrow, we have to understand how they use energy today. That’s harder than it sounds. Memory storage, information processing, and energy […]

On the threefold birth of the scientific method (2): René Descartes

Enable Focus Mode A+ A++ 🌙 5 min read Home In my last entry we had a glimpse on the ideas of one of the three main ‘fathers’ of ‘the’ scientific method, Francis Bacon. As I told then, inverted commas […]

Real space geometry of aperiodic tilings as control knob for quantum physics

Enable Focus Mode A+ A++ 🌙 5 min read Home When we study solid-state physics, we usually begin with crystals. In a crystal, atoms repeat in a strict and regular pattern, much like tiles on a bathroom floor. Because every […]

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Time is not a fundamental part of reality

Enable Focus Mode A+ A++ 🌙 14 min read Home Author: Florian Neukart, Assistant professor of Physics, Leiden University Time feels like the most basic feature of reality. Seconds tick, days pass and everything from planetary motion to human memory […]

The silicon advantage: How semiconductor manufacturing aims to solve the quantum computing scaling challenge

Enable Focus Mode A+ A++ 🌙 5 min read Home Authors: Roman Aseguinolaza, Quantum Hardware Predoctoral Researcher at CIC nanoGUNE & M. Fernando Gonzalez-Zalba, Quantum Hardware Group Leader and Ikerbasque Research Professor at CIC nanoGUNE The material at the heart […]

Humanity’s oldest known cave art has been discovered in Sulawesi

Enable Focus Mode A+ A++ 🌙 5 min read Home Authors: Maxime Aubert, Professor of Archaeological Science, Griffith University; Adam Brumm, Professor of Archaeology, Griffith University; Adhi Oktaviana, Research Centre of Archeometry, Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional Indonesia (BRIN), and […]

Enable Focus Mode A+ A++ 🌙 4 min read Home Authors: Ben Mather, ARC Early Career Industry Fellow, School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, The University of Melbourne; Adriana Dutkiewicz, ARC Future Fellow, Sedimentology, University of Sydney; Dietmar Müller […]

Why the mad artistic genius trope doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny

Enable Focus Mode A+ A++ 🌙 5 min read Home Author: Daisy Fancourt, Professor Psychobiology and Epidemiology, UCL Vincent van Gogh sliced off his ear with a knife during a psychotic episode. Ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky developed schizophrenia and spent […]

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Sir Humphry Davy, in a discourse delivered at the Royal Society in 1825 said:

Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and of no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown; and in philosophy, the sentiment of the Macedonian hero can never apply, — there are always new worlds to conquer.

Every time we make a new scientific discovery we sense where the limit of knowledge is, we feel where ignorance begins. Science is, for certain, what we think we know, but more precisely, it is being aware of the boundaries of the unknown.

In this blog we try to translate cutting edge scientific research into an educated lay-person language; consequently, as we do this, we will be Mapping Ignorance. Our goal is very simple: to spread both the latest developments in science and technology and a scientific worldview facilitating the access to it. To achieve this Mapping Ignorance is written by specialists in each field of expertise coordinated by a dedicated editor; the aim of them all is to make sometimes abstruse but otherwise wonderful scientific and technical information enjoyable by the interested general reader.

Mapping Ignorance is an initiative of the Chair of Scientific Culture of the University of the Basque Country under the Project Campus of International Excellence – Euskampus.