Our ability to find and share information today is potentially limitless. But how did we get here? From cave paintings to the iPad—how does human innovation bring us here?
When John Cardy proposed a far-reaching principle to constrain all possible theories of quantum particles and fields, he expected it to be quickly rebutted. But for almost 25 years that hasn’t happened—and it now seems that his theorem may have been quietly proved earlier this year. If the solution holds, it is likely to guide…
Using its country-specific content-blocking tool for the first time, Twitter has shut down access to a neo-Nazi group’s account in Germany. “Never want to withhold content; good to have tools to do it narrowly & transparently,” Alex Macgillivray, Twitter’s general counsel, tweeted. “We announced the ability to withhold content back in Jan. We’re using it…
Our first foray into laser-equipped combat aircraft was the Airborne Laser Testbed, a Boeing 747 with a gigantic chemically-pumped megawatt laser turret in its nose. It was pretty awesome from a conceptual standpoint, but it didn’t work very well, and was scrapped last year. This doesn’t mean that the idea of high-powered lasers on aircraft…
What is thought to be on the inside of religion and what is thought to be outside is something we should continually question. We need to push on these boundaries.
Unsociable galaxies are unusual. Astronomers think that galaxies grow from scraggly clusters of stars to elegant spirals like the Milky Way by merging and pooling their resources. Loner galaxies like NGC 4178, which has spent most of the lifetime of the universe avoiding the company of other galaxies, are useful tools for disentangling how this…
One reason No Child Left Behind is all but a failed initiative, is that one of its main metrics, Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), is a horrendous measure of educational progress. With AYP, each state sets its own goals and assesses progress with its own metric. If one state meets AYP and another one does not,…