Mere Minutes With AI Causes a Sharp Drop in Persistence
How much cognitive offloading is too much?
These New Snails Can Slam Shut Their Shells Like Doors
It’s always good to have the option of some peace and quiet
This Is the Oldest Peace Treaty Ever Discovered
Maybe there are a few things we can still learn from it
Blood Cells From an 80-Year-Old Transformed into Young Brain Cells
This new technique could be a huge leap forward for age-related brain research
I Seeded My Dreams and This Story Emerged
Poet Will Dowd let Jorge Luis Borges speak to him in his sleep
Latest Stories
A Distant Planet Emitted a Burst of Radio Waves. Why?
Astronomers pinpoint the origin of a 10 billion‑year‑old millisecond signal from space
Read Stories from Our Newest Print Issue: The Stupid Issue
See moreThe Elegance of a Stupid Question
Are computers in mathematics rewriting the definitions of stupid and smart?
The Resistance Is Here
They didn’t plan to be activists. But scientists have united to overturn Trump’s drastic cuts to science.
The Return of a Discredited Pseudoscience
Eugenics is rearing its ugly head again in today’s crucible of politics and culture
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Cutting-edge science, unraveled by the brightest living thinkers.
Astronomy
See more Astronomy
This Photo of the Martian Dawn Could Be Curiosity’s Most Serene Image Yet
Morning on the Red Planet
A Distant Star is Slowly Snacking on a Brown Dwarf
This absorption could take billions of years
History
See more History
Thousands of Fancy Dishes Have Survived a 2,100-Year-Old Shipwreck
You probably wouldn’t want to eat off them though
Psychology
See more PsychologyWhy Forgive and Forget is Bad Advice
A conversation with MacArthur fellow Felipe de Brigard about how forgiveness reshapes the memory of atrocity
Envy at the Ballot Box
Majority voting may make us less willing to tolerate advantages for others
I’m Part of the Team Writing the Next Bible of Psychiatry—For the First Time, the DSM Will Use Biology to Understand Mental Disorders
Part of the challenge of finding a biomarker for mental illness is the environment’s significant influence
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Environment
See more Environment
One Giant Clam Contains a Month‑by‑Month Diary of the Great Barrier Reef’s Climate 200 Years Ago
An under-the-sea autobiography
Astronaut Photos Taken Just 13 Years Apart Show a Major Shift in City Lights
We’ve moved on from the golden glow
Zoology
See more ZoologySingle Orangutan Moms Set up Playdates for Their Kids
And they go to considerable lengths to do it
From the Great Sphinx’s Raw Materials, a New Crocodile Species Surfaces
It from a bygone epoch when all sorts of crocs roamed the Mediterranean
Philosophy
See more PhilosophyCould AI Have Consciousness That Isn’t Human-Like?
Philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith on AI consciousness and existential risk
What a Picture of a Dog Has to Do with Reason and Logic
People who can’t see images in their minds challenge an old philosophical standby
What Makes Humans Stupid
It takes intelligence to get things spectacularly wrong. An essay on our undoing.
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Our Ancient Ancestors’ Lost Habitat Revealed by 700,000-Year-Old Elephant’s Tooth
An elephant’s tooth never forgets
A Recipe to Stop AI from Going Rogue
This formula aims to prevent LLMs from doing things that endanger humans
Meet the New Otterlike Predator That Scurried Alongside Dinosaurs
Its unique throat paved the way for our big brains
