In 1943, the German physicist Werner Heisenberg distracted himself from World War II by pondering a crisis in quantum theory. Predictions about how particles should behave were occasionally giving nonsensical, infinite results. These infinities led […]
For decades, the best drug therapies for treating depression, like SSRIs, have been based on the idea that depressed brains don’t have enough of the neurotransmitter serotonin. Yet for almost as long, it’s been clear […]
Reading a math paper is a bit like having dinner at a nice restaurant. The entrée might taste delicious, but it doesn’t tell the full story of how it was made. Clever recipes that end […]
György Buzsáki first started tinkering with waves when he was in high school. In his childhood home in Hungary, he built a radio receiver, tuned it to various electromagnetic frequencies and used a radio transmitter […]
Moore’s law is already pretty fast. It holds that computer chips pack in twice as many transistors every two years or so, producing major jumps in speed and efficiency. But the computing demands of the […]
Atomic physicists “are jacks of all trades,” according to Alex Sushkov. “You have to have the idea, design the experiment, build the experiment, run the experiment, fix everything, take data, analyze data, write up the […]
Imagine that you’re sent to a pristine rainforest to carry out a wildlife census. Every time you see an animal, you snap a photo. Your digital camera will track the total number of shots, but […]
In an old Indian parable, six blind men each touch a different part of an elephant. They disagree about what the elephant must look like: Is it smooth or rough? Is it like a snake […]
Out of all the cells in the body, oocytes are the most patient. The immature egg cells form inside a female’s body when she’s still a fetus in her mother’s womb, and then they wait […]
Imagine you had a friend who gave different answers to the same question, depending on how you asked it. “What’s the capital of Peru?” would get one answer, and “Is Lima the capital of Peru?” […]
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