The coronavirus epidemic increased the amount of screen time in our daily lives dramatically, from Netflix binges to Zoom meetings. Because spending so much time on gadgets may be stressful on the eyes, you’re not alone if you’ve noticed an increase in headaches, eye tiredness, or impaired vision since starting remote work. Digital eye strain,…
Shark Bay is a lonely island off the coast of Australia, where sienna-streaked cliffs meet the sea and ancient, bulbous stromatolites dot the landscape. This natural wonderland is not just a UNESCO world heritage site, but it also happens to be one of the few remaining homes for the elusive Gould’s mouse, an Australian rodent…
Avi revealed that I look for indications of intelligent civilizations in the sky because avi can’t seem to locate any on Earth in a recent Q&A forum about my book Extraterrestrial. “How do you characterize an intelligent civilization?” a member of the crowd joked.In avi’s opinion, an intelligent society is defined by scientific hallmarks, such…
For the first time, scientists have confirmed the existence of not one, but two black hole-neutron star collisions. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo facilities, which detect invisible gravitational waves, saw these two distinct mergers 10 days apart in January 2020. The achievement completes a long-awaited trinity of gravitational-wave interferometer observations: black…
Museums, libraries, and bookstores are reopening across the United States after a year of lockdown. The start of this cultural reawakening coincided with both the Juneteenth celebration and the first anniversary of one of the greatest anti-racial rallies in American history. As bookstores reopen, several are putting together displays of Black history-themed children’s books. The…
Mario Krenn, a quantum physicist, recalls sitting at a Vienna café in early 2016 reading through computer printouts, trying to make sense of what MELVIN had discovered. MELVIN was a sort of artificial intelligence created by Krenn using a machine-learning algorithm. Its mission was to mix and match the components of typical quantum experiments to…
Last week, Republican Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas asked a US Forest Service employee if her agency or the Bureau of Land Management could alter the moon’s or Earth’s orbit to reverse the impacts of human-caused climate change during a congressional hearing. Doesn’t that seem like an entirely appropriate plan? Let’s get started. First, we…
It’s easy to romanticize the body’s devotion to equilibrium in the face of extreme stress. As if it were some untrammeled divinity, a dark and gorgeous liver serenely regulates its life-sustaining activities. Nearby, twin cherubs of the torso, plump kidneys, churn out calls for water and salt. Even Claude Bernard, the 19th-century French physiologist who…
This year, delta-8 THC, a new marijuana cousin, erupted onto the national scene. It’s advertised as “weed light” or “the superior version of THC” on the cannabis internet. It sold as a vape or an edible, and the high is similar to a moderate form of traditional marijuana. In terms of chemical structure—three carbon rings,…
Carl Georg Count Sievers, an amateur archaeologist, performed excavations along the Salaca River in Latvia in 1875. He discovered two graves: one for a 12-to-18-year-old girl (named RV 1852) and another for a 20-to-30-year-old man (designated RV 1853). (RV 2039). Analysis of RV 2039 about 150 years later reveals that not only is he over…