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Science

Essays and videos exploring physics, evolution, cosmology and other frontiers in science
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Physics

Find the building blocks of nature within a single, humble snowflake

4 minutes

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History of science

The missing conversation

To the detriment of the public, scientists and historians don’t engage with one another. They must begin a new dialogue

Lorraine Daston & Peter Harrison

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War and peace

The two Chomskys

The US military’s greatest enemy worked in an institution saturated with military funding. How did it shape his thought?

Chris Knight

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History of science

The rights of the dead

From the Irish Giant to the Ancient One, is it ever ethical for scientists and museums to study bodies without permission?

Anita Guerrini

The International Space Station is seen at an angle through a window against the darkness of space
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Space exploration

The skyhook solution

Space junk surrounds Earth, posing a dangerous threat. But there is a way to turn the debris into opportunity

Angelos Alfatzis

A black and white photo of a man in doctor’s clothing posed next to a lab bench with a microscope looking directly at the camera
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Medicine

Physician, invade thyself

Eager for medical breakthroughs, some doctors take enormous risks experimenting on themselves. Should we celebrate them?

Tom Doyle

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Genetics

Evolution without accidents

Despite advances in molecular genetics, too many biologists think that natural selection is driven by random mutations

James A Shapiro

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Quantum theory

Untangling entanglement

Why does the quantum world behave in that strange, spooky way? Here’s our simple, four-step explanation (no magic needed)

Huw Price & Ken Wharton

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Personality

The myth of mirrored twins

What do the lives of twins tell us about heritability, selfhood and the age-old debate between nature and nurture?

Gavin Evans

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Physics

Time is an object

Not a backdrop, an illusion or an emergent phenomenon, time has a physical size that can be measured in laboratories

Sara Walker & Lee Cronin

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Quantum theory

All is One

The ancient philosophy of monism and the physics of quantum entanglement agree: all that exists is one unified whole

Heinrich Päs

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Information and communication

Mapping data visualisation’s meteoric rise from Victorian London to today

6 minutes

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History of science

Machina mundi

How medieval thinkers foreshadowed modern physics in investigating the character of machines, devices and forces

Henrik Lagerlund & Sylvain Roudaut

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History of ideas

Aristotle on making babies

He was the first great observer of nature. But his theory of human reproduction was deeply sexist – and enduring

Emily Thomas

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History of science

How an ancient polymath first calculated Earth’s size, as told by Carl Sagan

7 minutes

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Quantum theory

Why aren’t our everyday lives as ‘spooky’ as the quantum world?

7 minutes

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Gender and identity

Disarming transphobia

‘Rapid-onset gender dysphoria’ is a popular weapon in the anti-trans arsenal. It is nothing but unscientific bunk

Quinnehtukqut McLamore

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History of science

Bat-people on the Moon – what a famed 1835 hoax reveals about misinformation today

8 minutes

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Physics

The tangled tale of how physicists built a groundbreaking wormhole in a lab

17 minutes

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History of science

Inventing heaven

For hundreds of years, Christians knew exactly where heaven was: above us and above the stars. Then came the new cosmologists

Stephen Case

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Earth science and climate

Our Earth, shaped by life

Darwin was the first to see that all lifeforms, from worms to corals, transform the planet. What does that mean for us?

Olivia Judson

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Cosmology

Cogitating black holes

The Universe cannot always be understood through observation. Instead, physicists explore by devising thought experiments

Michael Dine

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History of science

How one of history’s most beautiful books was used to find fate in the cosmos

6 minutes

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History of science

A singular scientist

James Lovelock was a visionary whose greatest ideas were made possible by his unshakeable independence

Roger Highfield