Facts So Romantic

In more ways than one, the tingles seem to be fading. Just a few years ago, autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), a puzzling and blissful sensation, became the sudden focal point…

Want to hear a seamy insider secret from the science communication industry? The border between journalism and public relations has more turnstiles than Grand Central. Professionals move…

Sure, dolphins use sonar, whiz through the ocean at incredible speeds, and battle sharks. But can they chat? Last week, a study published in Russia’s St. Petersburg Polytechnical University…

A few months ago, my aunt sent her colleagues an email with the subject, “Math Problem! What is the answer?” It contained a deceptively simple puzzle: She thought her solution was obvious.…

When Lauret Edith Savoy first heard the word “colored” at five years old, she saw herself as exactly that—full of veins as blue as the sky. Not long after, she learned another definition,…

Some marriages are arranged. Some are for love, others for convenience. Some happen as the result of a sextillion-ton collision in space. The Earth and the moon, for example. Over the past…

A black hole is a physicist’s playground: A place where some of the most bizarre and fundamental concepts in physics can be observed and tested. However, there is currently no way to…

The 1980s at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory seemed to outsiders like a golden age, but inside, David Chapman could already see that winter was coming. As…

The new moon night was dark and rich in stars. The line at the bottom of the steps was 200 deep and growing. This was a busy public night at the Martz/Kohl Observatory atop Robin Hill,…

On a wet Wednesday in June, 1783, the first hot air balloon lifted into the sky in the French city of Annonay. It travelled three thousand feet into the air and was carried aloft for nearly…