Everything that happens to us starts with a choice Whether you believe it or not, everything up to this point in your life that has or has not happened to you is because of the choices you have made. Every aspect or our life when examined a little closer can be traced back to a series of...

It has been often said that it is only by gaining a true understanding of the past that we can ever hope to find the vital key to understanding its future and in turn, our own. The reality is that our distant history is still an enormous riddle. We only know what we do from the gradual piecing...

I feel completely different person since the last two years. My perspective to the world and humanity shifted and gradually became bottom-up process, which I realize lately, and had very good impacts in my life. The stream of information, cognitive toolkits, and knowledge are easy to be...

By now, our overwhelming tendency to look for what confirms our beliefs and ignore what contradicts our beliefs is well documented Psychologists refer to this as confirmation bias, and its ubiquity is observed in both academia and in our everyday lives: Republicans watch Fox while Democrats...

Recently, scientists identified mechanism deep in brains of mice that can be tweaked to shorten or lengthen lives. They have found a biological command centre for the ageing process in a lump of brain the size of a nut. The key to stalling the harsh march of aging is likely deep inside your...

I wonder, when we write or compose musics, which part of the brain activate? When we play musical improvisations, instead of reading music notations, which part of the brain activate? Music is to mental health what sports is to physical health. Since sound recognition involves developing...

Not if we could work a way around our boredom, it could be a very different kind of future waiting for us   If you imagine yourself as an elf, live along side with men, dwarves, goblins and orcs, and any nasty creatures of Middle Earth for thousands of years, you might get frustrated...

“We all wonder why we don’t look like, act like, feel like everybody else. Each of our brains has the exact same parts. The Cortex, Hypothalamus, Fornix, Septal Nucleus so on.. and yet.. no two brains are exactly alike. So being different.. Being unique.. is undeniably a...

Human immortality is a broad subject. It is science and religion. It is futurism and conservatism. Since forever, human beings have wanted immortality. It literally goes back to the first epic that’s ever been written, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Sumerians’ epic poems that lead us into the...

One of the most common objections to my position on free will is that accepting it could have terrible consequences, psychologically or socially. This is a strange rejoinder, analogous to what many religious people allege against atheism: Without a belief in God, human beings will cease to be...

Truth is provisional, shifting, temporary and subjective, and the quest for elucidation is forever incomplete and wholly narrative. Fiction allows scientists to explore reality in the way the day job doesn’t allow   One of the mistakes that people – and I include scientists and...

One Millionaire’s Quest to Build the Biggest Library on Earth   Here’s the problem with libraries. They catch on fire really easily. As such, they were the prized targets of the invading hordes of antiquity – the model collections of knowledge of their times, whose only fault was...

Plumbing system found in mice makes scientist’s “heart sing.”   Talk about brainwashing—a newfound plumbing system, identified in mice, likely helps the brain empty its waste, a new study says. Because mouse biology is similar to ours, the same findings should apply to...

I believe that this presentation is not just theory; it is fact.  We live in a world, a galaxy, and a universe of six dimensions.  The physics used today do not reflect the last two dimensions and are thus limited in theory, especially where and when different fields are involved.  With six...

A decade ago, the internet’s signature feature was obfuscation. You could invent a new identity; embellish your life to make it that much more interesting; buff out the imperfections; or just hide without feeling like an anti-social creep for it. Message boards, chat rooms, and nascent...

There’s a lot to be said for living a good, honest life. If you avoid lying, chances are you’ll have an easier time at work. You won’t have to sneak around with your significant other. You’ll be well liked by the clergy. And according to new research by scientists at the University of...

The Big Rip Theory might be the scariest scenario for the end of everything we’ve come across. That the universe will just tear itself apart.   Most experts believe the amount of matter in the universe will cause the expansion of the universe to slow down — and the universe may...

With respect to the cosmos, mankind has just been born. Hypothetically, if our 14 billion-year-old universe were scaled down to just 10 years (for the sake of comparison), dinosaurs would have been extinct 17 days ago, our earliest relative Lucy would have been playing around on the Savannah...

Without it, the evolution of ideas can’t take place. In order to choose the best ideas, we must be able to debate all ideas equally and freely. No doubt most of us are tired of dealing with President Zuma’s penis. But the important issue of “dignity” versus “free expression” was...

There’s a myth out there that has gained the status of a cliché: that scientists love proving themselves wrong, that the first thing they do after constructing a hypothesis is to try to falsify it. Professors tell students that this is the essence of science. Yet most scientists behave...

At some point, the Mongol military leader Kublai Khan (1215–94) realized that his empire had grown so vast that he would never be able to see what it contained. To remedy this, he commissioned emissaries to travel to the empire’s distant reaches and convey back news of what he owned....

In a recent Search Engine podcast, host Jesse Brown wondered about music’s ongoing centrality to the debate over file-sharing and freedom. After all, the music industry has all but abandoned lawsuits against fans, and services from Last.fm to the Amazon MP3 store present a robust set of...

Geneva, 4 July 2012. At a seminar held at CERN1 today as a curtain raiser to the year’s major particle physics conference, ICHEP2012 in Melbourne, the ATLAS and CMS experiments presented their latest preliminary results in the search for the long sought Higgs particle. Both experiments...

There’s trouble at the start of time: the theory of cosmic inflation has got way out of control. Can quantum theory and holograms tame it?   “You know how sometimes you meet somebody and they’re really nice, so you invite them over to your house and you keep talking with...

When it comes to light, Albert Einstein would agree with Daniel J. Boorstin‘s quote that “the greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge.” Even though we know so much, we still are far from knowing enough. One aspect of this illusion is...

How evolution sculpts moral systems The most hotly debated issues in culture and politics tend to get framed in moralistic terms, such as the fairness of income inequality, the sanctity of heterosexual marriage, the ethics of campaign finance laws, and the obligation of society to protect...

There is this myth that scientists are unemotional, rational seekers of truth. This is typified by the quote from Bertrand Russell: But if philosophy is to attain truth, it is necessary first and foremost that philosophers should acquire the disinterested intellectual curiosity which...

We’re obsessed with relentless focus. We assume that if we encounter a difficult problem the best strategy is to chug red bull or drink coffee. Drugs including Adderall and Ritalin are prescribed to millions to improve focus. Taking a break is a faux pas, mind wandering even worse. Yet,...

Last week, Time treated readers to an explanation of what makes scary music scary. The short answer: our monkey brains. Taking the famous two-note theme from Jaws as Exhibit A, the article unleashed a whole lot of Science: “Those irregular minor chords trigger the same instinctual response a...

On May 7, 1824, Beethoven took to the stage for the first time in twelve years to direct what would be considered one of the greatest pieces of music ever written. His conductorship of Symphony No. 9 received standing ovations and tumultuous applause from a packed Viennese hall. But Beethoven...

  Will you be any worse off the moment humans cease to speak in Aragonese? How about Navajo, or Ojibwa? Or Koro, a language only just discovered in a tiny corner of northeast India? No, you probably wouldn’t, not in that moment. But humanity would be. Science, art and culture would...

If there’s one thing everyone knows about mountains—and given the state of geography education today, that may be a pretty accurate estimate—it’s that Mount Everest, in the Himalayas, is the Earth’s highest point. But what if it wasn’t? What if Everest, with its famous 29,029-foot...

All countries have a high point and a low point, elevationally speaking, but “high” and “low” can be very relative terms. The lowest point of hilly Uganda, for example, would still tower four hundred feet above Cathedral Hill, the highest point of low-lying Uruguay. What country do you...

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the organization in charge of maintaining the Internet’s address system, opened the floodgates to a giant new stable of Internet addresses. You see, for over a decade, we’ve been stuck with a rather measly assortment of generic top...

Geo-engineering schemes are projects designed to tackle the effects of climate change directly, usually by removing CO2 from the air or limiting the amount of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface. Although large-scale geo-engineering is still at the concept stage, advocates claim that...

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” follows title character Bilbo Baggins, who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, which was long ago conquered by the dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo finds himself joining a...

Want to maximize your learning capacity? Get some sleep. That’s the takeaway from a study that examined the influence of sleep and time of day on learning and memory. This latest research is another piece of compelling evidence that sleeping helps to strengthen our ability to learn new...

Keeping the Internet growing   When the Internet launched operationally in 1983, its creators never dreamed that there might be billions of devices and users trying to get online. Yet now, almost three decades later, that same Internet serves nearly 2.5 billion people and 11 billion...

Rosie Redfield (who blogs on this network) has just published a careful and decisive rebuttal to the “arsenic bacteria” fiasco in collaboration with a group at Princeton. The paper which will appear in Science is under embargo for now, but there is a copy available at that bastion...

A physicist presents a solution to present-day cosmic mysteries   Our universe may exist inside a black hole. This may sound strange, but it could actually be the best explanation of how the universe began, and what we observe today. It’s a theory that has been explored over the...

An Interview with Author Stan Cox   It hit 95 degrees in Chicago on Monday, making it the hottest Memorial Day in the city’s history. The temperature generated a number of heat warnings instructing individuals to avoid the outdoors while staying in air conditioned spaces. Are we now so...

In Voltaire‘s book Zadig, Or Fate, the titular character says that time “consigns to oblivion whatever is unworthy of being transmitted to posterity, and it immortalises such actions as are truly great.” In Midnight’s Children, time is central as the title itself indicates....

Based on conversations with a range of experts, the motivations—and the psychological mechanisms behind them—can be classified under three distinct roles: teller, researcher, and listener. The Teller Something to talk about. Grandparents may share family stories to bypass generational gaps...