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Why Birds Can Fly Over Mount Everest
A story for my grandchildren about oxygen, evolution, and our planet’s fate.
Life on Earth Is a Sketchy Guide to an Alien Civilization
Any assumptions about properties like intelligence or agency that we make based on what we currently know about life on Earth are on exceedingly shaky ground.Photograph by European Southern Observatory (ESO) / Wikicommons You might imagine that in the midst of a global pandemic and all of its social and economic fallout that our minds […]
The Animal Kingdom Should Have Father’s Day Too
A concerned clownfish father looking after his nest of tiny, orange eggs.Justin Rhodes Becoming a parent brings out the best in many animals. Although parenting is usually left to the females, males from many species go above and beyond to care for the offspring. Take anemonefish. In Finding Nemo, Marlin swims over 1,000 miles from […]
T. Rex Was a Slacker
A natural wonder of the big theropod was how it conserved energy.
The Power of Crossed Brain Wires
Synesthesia makes ordinary life marvelous.
A Neuroscientist’s Theory of Everything
Karl Friston takes us on a safari of his free-energy principle.
Could an AI Be Immortal?
Data is under attack and uploads his brain. Does he survive?
The Road Less Traveled to Fusion Energy
This privateer is developing a way to power the world with water and borax.
Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient?
How massive parallelism lifts the brain’s performance above that of AI.
Why Aliens and Volcanoes Go Together
Life on other planets may rely on plate tectonics.
