People who use a ‘brain-workout’ program for just 10 hours have a mental edge over their peers even a year later, researchers report today in PLoS ONE1. The search for a regimen of mental callisthenics to stave off age-related cognitive decline is a booming area of research — and a multimillion-dollar business. But critics argue…
In recent years astronomers have extended their view almost to the very edge of the observable universe. With the venerable Hubble Space Telescope researchers have spotted a handful of galaxies so faraway that we see them as they appeared just 400 million years or so after the big bang. But even as astronomers peer ever…
The relationship between science and religion has always been vexed. Most scientists I know are nonbelievers, convinced that there is no deity, or at least that there is no convincing evidence of one. Even those who are believers, like Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, see their religion and their science as…
Most primates make rudimentary calls that consist of one or two syllables. But the gelada—native only to the grasslands of the Ethiopian plateau—displays “rapid fluctuations in pitch and volume” akin to human speech. The similarity has researchers’ tongues wagging. “Our finding provides support for the lip-smacking origins of [human] speech, because it shows that this…
Craig Hogan believes that the world is fuzzy. This is not a metaphor. Hogan, a physicist at the University of Chicago and director of the Fermilab Particle Astrophysics Center near Batavia, Ill., thinks that if we were to peer down at the tiniest subdivisions of space and time, we would find a universe filled with…
Human brains are remarkably inefficient in some key ways: our memories are lousy; our grasp of logic is shallow, and our capacity to do arithmetic is dismal. Our collective cognitive shortcomings are so numerous I’ve written a book about them. And yet, in some ways, we continue to far outstrip the very silicon-based computers that…
Roger Ebert was always a great friend of Salon’s. We’re deeply saddened by reports of his death, and are re-printing this essay, from his book “Life Itself: A Memoir,” which we think fans will take particular comfort in reading now. I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there…
Five years ago, few people had heard the phrase “Big Data.” Now, it’s hard to go an hour without seeing it. In the past several months, the industry has been mentioned in dozens of New York Times stories, in every section from metro to business. (Wired has even already declared it passé: “STOP HYPING BIG…
Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins may never have envisioned the current era of Big Data, but their shared fundamental principle – “all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities” – may also apply to the new exponential proliferation of 1’s and 0’s in the digital universe. Is there any reason why data –…
From a serene view of planet Earth, through the heart of the Milky Way and out to far-flung galaxies, take an armchair tour of the Universe with these dazzling images