Lens_ideas

419 articles
  • Dant_HERO

    The Electromagnetic Force of Fridge Magnets

    An illustrated guide to the universal laws in your kitchen.
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    Electrons May Very Well Be Conscious

    Panpsychists look at the many rungs on the complexity ladder of nature and see no obvious line between mind and no-mind.Illustration by Yurchanka Siarhei / Shutterstock Last year, the cover of New Scientist ran the headline, “Is the Universe Conscious?” Mathematician and physicist Johannes Kleiner, at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy in Germany, told […]
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    How Maxwell’s Demon Continues to Startle Scientists

    Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.The universe bets on disorder. Imagine, for example, dropping a thimbleful of red dye into a swimming pool. All of those dye molecules are going to slowly spread throughout the water. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Physicists quantify this tendency to […]
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    Do We Have Free Will? Maybe It Doesn’t Matter

    It’s hard to change people’s beliefs about free will. So, it can feel like a relief to realize that even when you can change people’s beliefs, it seems to make no moral difference anyway.Illustration by Triff / Shutterstock Belief is a special kind of human power. Agustin Fuentes, an anthropologist at the University of Notre […]
  • Wilson_HERO

    I Have Come to Bury Ayn Rand

    A prominent evolutionary biologist slays the beast of Individualism.