Article archives

This is the second of the series of articles on the geometry of String Theory compactifications. Before reading this note, the interested reader may want to read the first note, where the concept of compactification background is introduced in the context of String Theory and M-Theory compactifications. As it is well known, to be well-defined […]

Here is an example of the “discursive dilemma” or “doctrinal paradox”: Say that a jury of three members must decide by majority rule whether a candidate should be accepted in a group. The rules specify that the candidate must meet two requirements, A and B, to be accepted. The first member of the jury believes […]

A extremely rare set of 4 quasars Astronomers have spotted an extremely rare grouping of four quasars within about 650,000 light-years of space. The odds against finding four so close together are 10 million to one. The rare quartet exists in an unusually bright nebula that has scientists scratching their heads as well. National Geographic […]

Mechanics and thermodynamics are two of the main pillars of physics. Mechanics, the branch of physics that studies movement, is considered to be well established since the publication of Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687). Thermodynamics, the science dealing with heat and temperature, enjoyed its golden age in the 19th century, and was the […]

One of the main features of a F1 car is aerodynamics. How the car minimizes the drag imposed by the fact it is moving through a fluid, air, and how it takes advantage of the forces this movement generates to keep it stuck to the track, are most important for its performance. Even though the […]

True empathy is considered by most researchers to be an exclusive ability of primates, particularly humans and apes, the result of complex reasoning and abstract thought. However, empathy may be a phylogenetically continuous ability with particular types such as «emotional contagion» present in all classes of mammals. In fact, it has been shown that empathy […]

We ended the first article of this series introducing the man who very likely is the first skeptic philosopher properly speaking, Gorgias of Leontini, and who, as we saw, is said to have claimed, 1) that the being is not (or ‘there is nothing’), 2) that if some being existed, it could not be known […]

Graphene, carbon nanotubes help spiders spin stronger webs Several spiders sprayed with mixtures of water and either graphene particles or carbon nanotubes went on to weave markedly stronger webs, according to researchers at the University of Trento in Italy. The scientists found that webs made by spiders sprayed with the nanotubes produced the strongest silk […]

Enantiomers are any two molecules that are mirror images of each other, in the same way that, within a same person, left and right hands are: both hands look exactly the same but indeed they are not, as they cannot be superimposed. This is very easily seen when we try to put the wrong glove […]

Imagine that you enter a room full of a poisonous gas wearing a mask that is not good enough to prevent the gas reaching your lungs and killing you. The mask is not good enough because it would allow the gas to diffuse through the fabric it is made of, eventually reaching your nose and […]