The physicist Antony Valentini recently argued in IAI News that quantum mechanics is a straightforward—though incomplete—description of material reality. Today, philosopher and former Dire

Southern California communities such as Malibu, Long Beach, and San Clemente are watching their beaches disappear. In recent years, rising sea levels have swallowed huge chunks of the coastline, threa

If your morning routine rotates around the moment your lips first brush against the soft froth of a flat white, well... ahem... you’re probably over-romanticising your relationship with coffee.

Cancer may seem like an inevitable part of life, but there are so many factors that can help reduce your risk. When we think about reducing cancer risk, we usually think of lifestyle factors: smoking,

The textbooks and history lessons tend to treat the Black Death as one devastating wave of pestilence that hit Europe between 1347 and 1353. However, the full story of the disease goes on for many cen

For two decades, largely in service to the International Space Station, NASA has sought to foster an “economy” in low-Earth orbit. Twenty years ago, with a program to develop private space

The 2026-27 El Niño is on track to be the strongest event in the instrumental record. The latest (September 2026) runs of the 14 seasonal forecast models that I track over at the Climate Dashbo

The infamous Carrington Event of 1859 has long been considered the first extreme space weather event, but there have been reports of minor disturbances to telegraph equipment during geomagnetic storms

On the morning of 20 November 1820, 15-year-old Thomas Nickerson had just escaped from one whale punching a hole in the side of his boat. Rowing quickly back to the main whaling ship as the boat took

The internet loves an underdog story, especially when the underdog is an actual dog going up against a bear. Last week, a French bulldog named Cassie made headlines for engaging with a bear that attac

A study in Finland measured heating capacity and resilience to temperature changes of breasts of nursing women, non-nursing women, and men. Results showed that breastfeeding women had overall higher b

The late Ronald Graham wore two hats. He was a renowned mathematician, at one time president of the American Mathematical Society. He was also a serious juggler, and president of the International Jug

On a spring day last year, Andrew Willoughby drove three and a half hours to a cheap motel in Nags Head, N.C. From the parking lot, he texted a stranger he had met online. Julia Van Etten appeared, us

Nearly 2 million years ago, a leopard in Africa sank its teeth into the face of an early human. This bite etched tiny tooth marks into the unlucky person’s jawbone. That bone now speaks to a chi

When Anthropic, the artificial intelligence giant, unveiled findings from its new biology lab last week, its scientists claimed to have used A.I. agents to discover new enzymes with promise for biotec

For author Melanie Saward, stories are so much more than words.

When his metal detector spotted the first coin, Oliver Riedl knew he had uncovered something special; removing the surrounding earth revealed a small, rounded piece of silver—obviously ancient&m

The list of supplements sold in the United States is long and wordy: curcumin, turmeric, berberine, magnesium glycinate, L-lycine, milk thistle, and many, many, many more. Though each has its ardent d

In my first months as a physics journalist nearly a decade ago, I kept running into an inscrutable string of characters: AdS/CFT. Thoroughly intimidated, I decided to just ignore it. But I couldn&rsqu

For most of us, our memories are as fragile as they are precious. Even some of the most important events in our lives can quickly become a blur, missing key details and warping with time. In some very

Will AI take our jobs? Even for those who aren’t worried about human extinction, much of the conversation about the technology begins and ends there. A Gallup survey released last week found tha

Nathan Cofnas, the self-professed “race realist” who made international headlines when he accused Cambridge academic Jason Arday of plagiarism, has defended his “hereditarianism&rdqu

Encyclopaedia Britannica recently wrote that the Big Bang happened everywhere at once, which is the standard assumption in astrophysics under the cosmological principle. We have evidence for an early

Conversations about pornography often begin with a simple question: Is it good or bad for a relationship? Research suggests that this may be the wrong question. Pornography use is not consistently lin

Rogan and Huberman both have millions of listeners, so whenever they come together for a conversation at least one clip goes viral on social media. In the conversation that came out last week, the vir

As the strongest El Niño on record unfolds over the coming months, many parts of the world will see drastic weather shifts. This phenomenon alters atmospheric circulation, temperatures, and pre

Yesterday’s New York Times featured an op-ed by David Wallace-Wells and Zeke Hausfather — a journalist and climate scientist respectively — both well-known for their commitments to c

Diet and exercise can both influence how long you live, but research suggests they're not the single greatest predictor of longevity. According to a study published in Sleep Advances, something else m

It was a rather dreary October afternoon in 2011 when I turned to my computer to watch a rough cut of Jefferson’s Secret Bible, a documentary for the Smithsonian cable television channel. I was

The 2013 sci-fi blockbuster film Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, popularized the notion of the Kessler syndrome. In the movie, Russia shoots down a defunct satellite and creates a

For practical purposes, we say that one day—the time it takes for Earth to rotate once on its axis—equates to 24 hours. In reality, different factors across different timescales influence

You’ve probably heard the saying that reading is good for you, perhaps in the form of a reprimand from someone who thinks you don’t do it enough. Now, a team of scientists has compiled res

From osteoarthritis to a splitting migraine, when you're experiencing pain, exercise can seem like the last thing you want or think you should do. But according to new Adelaide University research pub

When Caitlin Bloomer wrestled the massive Crawzilla crawdad — yes, that’s its actual common name — out of the muck during a bio-survey event in Kentucky, she was convinced it was the

Quantum mechanics is seen as challenging the idea that science provides objective descriptions of reality outside of our minds. The “measurement problem” seems to suggest that the act of o

A governing equation in quantum mechanics, the Schrödinger equation is, in practice, impossible to solve exactly. The mathematicians Éric Cancès, Mathieu Lewin, and Julien Tou

This year, artificial intelligence models have been mowing down open problems in mathematics, one after another, with brutal efficiency. The carnage escalated in early September, when OpenAI unleashed

I have a confession: When I arrived at the Grand Hyatt hotel in D.C. on Thursday to cover an anti-vaccine conference, my intention was to make fun of it. That was wrong. To be clear, I have an unsh

Have you ever read a paper in Science or Nature and thought, “Man, that research was so cool. I wish I could try that method on my own data,” only to spend a week wrestling with someone el

Angela Oliverio, a microbiologist at Syracuse University, studies the edge of what's possible.

Around 631,000 years ago — a geological blink of an eye — catastrophe unfolded in what is now north-western Wyoming, US. During what is thought to have been a series of immense volcanic e

Will no one rid American taxpayers of the embarrassing farce that is the federal government’s pursuit of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP)? For almost a decade, D.C.’s executive and l

Across the Western world, young men and boys face a changing economy, with fewer manual labor jobs and factory floors that used to give a swathe of working-class men purpose and value. This leaves a l

A recent article in the New York Times is, unfortunately, terrible journalism that ends up shilling for a fraudulent and exploitative industry. The author, Sarah Wildman, tells of her previous encount

Dementia research has reached a profound turning point. Alzheimer's disease was once considered 'untreatable', but that is not the universal rule any longer, according to this year's World Alzheimer R

Tech billionaires attempting to live for ever are, quite literally, wasting their time, a leading physicist has said. While some normal people are turning to unregulated peptide injections, cold plung

Anyone looking for love likely has an idea of what they would ideally desire in a partner. And appearance is only one component. One of the most desirable traits in a prospective partner is authentic

Exercise is good for you – that much we can all agree on – but which exercises work best for which types of benefit? Knowing that can help in developing personalized exercise programs that

Uncaging laying hens and giving them more freedom seems like an obvious win for animal welfare. But when researchers counted not only behavioral benefits but also feed, emissions, land use, dise

The human brain is not a single organ, but two separate systems that evolved independently before fusing together, according to groundbreaking new research. Scientists at Stanford University made the