Story

20 articles
  • Article Image

    Arts

    Most of the Mind Can’t Tell Fact from Fiction

    Even after you understand how an illusion operates, it continues to fool part of your mind. This is the kind of double knowledge we have when we consume fiction.Photograph by KieferPix / Shutterstock Stories, fiction included, act as a kind of surrogate life. You can learn from them so seamlessly that you might believe you […]

  • Article Image

    Evolution

    Can New Species Evolve From Cancers? Maybe.

    Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.Aggressive cancers can spread so fiercely that they seem less like tissues gone wrong and more like invasive parasites looking to consume and then break free of their host. If a wild theory recently floated in Biology Direct is correct, something like that might indeed happen on rare […]

  • Rieppel_HERO

    History

    How American Tycoons Created the Dinosaur

    The story of dinosaurs is also the story of capitalism.

  • Musser_HERO

    Physics

    A Hologram Shows How Space Could Pop Into Existence

    The holographic principle—with a real hologram.

  • Article Image

    Paleontology

    What Color Really Evolved For

    The finding that melanosomes are so common inside animals’ bodies may overhaul our very understanding of the function of melanin, the pigment responsible for color in feathers and other external features.Photograph by Aline Dassel / Pixabay What color were the dinosaurs? If you have a picture in your head, fresh studies suggest you may need […]

  • Berger_HERO

    Neuroscience

    Human Emotions Are Personal Narratives

    Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux on what makes our brains unique.