Best-explored planet outside our solar system WASP-39b, a boiling Saturn-like planet 700 light-years away from the sun has become the best-explored planet outside our solar system, as the James Webb Space Telescope’s observations have yielded a trove of information about […]
Usually, optical activity is understood as the ability some substances have to change the handedness of polarized light when it goes through them. Molecules that show optical activity have no plane of symmetry. So-called chiral matter broadly describes structures for […]
Imagine an old-growth forest in the fading light of a summer evening. As the last of the sun’s rays disappear beneath the horizon, a tiny flash catches your eye. You turn around, hold your breath; it blinks again, hovering 2 […]
When polar seas freeze and ice forms, it is not only due to cold air chilling the surface of the water. Even more important is that warm water is prevented from rising to the surface from the depths of the […]
Meteorites may have brought water to Earth Analysis of fragments of a meteorite that landed in the driveway of a British home in 2021 revels the space debris originated in the outer solar system and held water chemically similar to […]
Once upon the time, or to be precise between 200 and 150 000 years ago, the incipient humanity was struggling with climatic conditions in its land of origin, Africa. A long glacial era, M2 , had made it difficult to […]
According to theory of degrowth , the only way to save the planet and humanity from catastrophic collapse due to depletion of natural resources would be to radically limit, and even reduce, global production levels and, since there is still […]
For the intellectual history of our century, one of the most important books published in 2021 will probably be David Graeber’s and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity , a monumental description of the evolution […]
This column seems to be gaining a new subcategory, which we could name ‘Wokism as the latest historians’ epidemic’ or something like that. I have already written a couple of reviews of recent books that tried to awaken us from […]
Imagine a Universe that started with a huge explosion setting the beginning of space and time to the point that such concepts have no meaning until then. Imagine a Universe that, after an inflationary phase (extremely fast expansion), kept expanding […]
For the first time, a Nobel Prize recognized the field of anthropology, the study of humanity. Svante Pääbo, a pioneer in the study of ancient DNA, or aDNA, was awarded the 2022 prize in physiology or medicine for his breathtaking […]
Astronomy • Biology • Evolution • Geosciences
Are we alone in the universe? This is a question that has intrigued humans for centuries and inspired countless studies and works of fiction. But are we getting closer to finding this out? Now that the James Webb Space Telescope […]
In 1906, Alois Alzheimer, a psychiatrist and neuroanatomist, reported “a peculiar severe disease process of the cerebral cortex” to a gathering of psychiatrists in Tübingen, Germany. The case was a 50-year-old woman who suffered from memory loss, delusions, hallucinations, aggression […]
A few years ago, the chess website Chess.com temporarily banned US grandmaster Hans Niemann for playing chess moves online that the site suspected had been suggested to him by a computer program. It had reportedly previously banned his mentor Maxim […]
Astronomers once believed the Sun revolved around the Earth. In the 19th century, scientists thought the shape of a person’s skull could reveal their mental strengths or weaknesses. And in the 20th century, many scientists fiercely opposed the idea that […]