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The plan for an artificial Martian magnetosphere may sound “fanciful,” but researchers say that emerging research is starting to show that a miniature magnetosphere can be used to protect humans and spacecraft.NASA Earth is most fortunate to have vast webs of magnetic fields surrounding it. Without them, much of our atmosphere would have been gradually […]

Byzantine military inventors perfected Greek Fire, a combustible liquid like napalm that could be hurled at enemy ships (or lobbed against land armies as hand grenades).Madrid Skylitzes (12th century) / Wikicommons Byzantine civilization, the eastern Roman empire whose capital was at Constantinople, is mostly known today for its spirituality and eccentricities, including the spectacular church […]

Former correction officer Gary Klivans doesn’t want to be photographed more clearly for fear of gang retaliation.Gary Klivans As a corrections officer at a Westchester County, N.Y., prison in the 1990s, Gary Klivans was a one-man gang unit. Members of The Latin Kings and the Bloods made up a sizable part of the prison population. […]

What we don’t tell our children.

Uncovering the nature of sexual selection.

Tracing the evolution of hidden sexual preferences.

Scientists are starting to understand that search powers much of the natural world, too.Image by Intelligent Product Solutions / YouTube Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” Verse 7:7 from the Gospel of Matthew is generally considered to be a comment on […]

The surprising forces influencing the complexity of the language we speak and write.

The best-selling writer of “The Martian” has a new book out, and it’s set closer to home.

Two stories from the remarkable work of Sy Montgomery and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas.