consciousness Insects and Other Animals Have Consciousness, Experts Declare By Dan Falk April 19, 2024 A group of prominent biologists and philosophers announced a new consensus: There’s “a realistic
Water is a rogue force in politics. It arrives suddenly as a deluge. It disappears for years as a drought. Lakes, rivers and storms are no respecters of borders, where neighbors can squabble over ever
In late August, Steve Rubin, a fish biologist with the United States Geological Survey, will dive into the frigid, briny water of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, roughly a mile from the mouth of the Elwha
Every Friday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri speaks to the people. He has made a habit of hosting weekly “ask me anything” sessions on Instagram, in which followers send him questions about the app, its
Darreonna Davis Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reporting Fellow Published 2024-04-18 07:00 7:00 April 18, 2024 am Share Darreonna Davis is a 2023-2024 Frances Ellen Watkins Harper reporting fellow. Appl
Don’t you hate it when you leave your valuables in your car with no way to get them back—and they’re 140 million miles from Earth? That’s the prospect NASA is facing right now. Its flagship multibilli
In 2022, Google engineer Blake Lemoine developed a rapport with an excellent conversationalist. She was witty, insightful, and curious; their dialogues flowed naturally, on topics ranging from philoso
Oppenheimer’s success at the box office—and the Academy Awards—shows that scientific achievements can sparkle at the cinema. That’s good for science, where physics and biology have starring roles in h
Everywhere you turn, there is talk of lived experience. But there is little consensus about what the phrase ‘lived experience’ means, where it came from, and whether it has any value. Although long us
Saturn has 146 confirmed moons – more than any other planet in the solar system – but one called Enceladus stands out. It appears to have the ingredients for life. From 2004 to 2017, Cassini – a joint
In October 2022 a bird with the code name B6 set a new world record that few people outside the field of ornithology noticed. Over the course of 11 days, B6, a young Bar-tailed Godwit, flew from its h
The brain’s cortex, which handles higher cognitive functions in mammals, is split into six distinct physical layers marked by varying cell types, sizes and connections—and new research suggests these
Welcome to Healing is My Special Interest, the newsletter at the intersection of late-diagnosed neurodivergence and healing from high control environments. If you are someone who has been high-masking
Like so many people, I took refuge in the outdoors during the worst of the COVID pandemic, going on socially distanced walks and sitting on the deck in all kinds of weather. Being outside reduced the
Does Planet Nine exist? This mystery has puzzled scientists for decades, but the answer—and the suspected world—remains elusive. Astronomers leading the search for the potential planet orbiting our su
Culture, if we can still call it that, has taken a definite downward turn in the last couple of decades. Tee shirts with I HATE YOUR F—ING MASK (the F word spelled out) printed in large letters on the
Crows, chimps and elephants: these and many other birds and mammals behave in ways that suggest they might be conscious. And the list does not end with vertebrates. Researchers are expanding their inv
Andy Hines At private Vanderbilt University on March 26th, 27 students affiliated with the Vanderbilt Divest Coalition occupied the main administration building, Kirkland Hall, before they were forcib
Biosphere 2, a research facility/tourist attraction outside Tucson, Arizona, is more a glass pyramid than a sphere, but it once served as a metaphor for a certain kind of totality, a particular antici
The internet emerged from the defense research establishment, but as it was breaking out of those constraints in the 1990s to be unleashed onto the wider world, it had to be given a new story — and li
Credits Brian Stone Jr. is a professor in the School of City and Regional Planning and director of the Urban Climate Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. This essay is adapted from his recent b
Jesse Plemons, in a scene that will play on repeat in my nightmares for at least a week. There is a sparseness to Alex Garland’s new movie, Civil War. The film feels like a blunt object. It is brutal,
Lisa Kaltenegger’s lab has a bit more color than a typical research facility, filled as it is with a plethora of bright glassware. It’s the kind of rainbow array you might expect to see in the lab of
Photograph by Pal Hermansen / NaturePL version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"? Bearing Weight The Overview Deep Ecology 04.26.2024 words by willow defebaugh A fatal encounter with a North American black bear
Hello, and welcome to Blood in the Machine: The Newsletter. (As opposed to, say, Blood in the Machine: The Book.) It’s a one-man publication that covers big tech, labor, power, and AI. It’s free, thou
April 22, 2024 3 min read After Months of Gibberish, Voyager 1 Is Communicating Well Again NASA scientists spent months coaxing the 46-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft back into healthy communication NAS
Cheng "Charlie" Saephan laughs while speaking during a press conference after it was revealed that he was one of the winners of the $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot at the Oregon Lottery headquarters on
One of the best features of the Apple TV is its robust collection of Aerial screen savers. When your Apple TV sits idle for a few minutes, tvOS switches to these soothing Aerial videos while it awaits
The Yellow Books by Vincent van Gogh This week fellow Substacker Elle Griffin published “No one buys books,” which looks at quotes and stats from the DOJ vs. PRH (Penguin Random House) trial where the
I’ve been thinking about Moses, and his rage when he came down from the mount to find the Israelites worshipping a golden calf. The ecofeminist in me was always uneasy about this story: what kind of G
In 2022, Penguin Random House wanted to buy Simon & Schuster. The two publishing houses made up 37 percent and 11 percent of the market share, according to the filing, and combined they would have con
fundamental physics Hopes of Big Bang Discoveries Ride on a Future Spacecraft April 17, 2024 Physicists and cosmologists will have a new probe of primordial processes when Europe launches the Laser In
Explore The history of astronomy has hinged on radical ideas that transformed our understanding of the cosmos and our place in it. The most obvious of these may be the discovery in the 16th century th
Engineers working on NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter assembled for one last time in a control room at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California on Tuesday, April 16, to monitor a
In the not-too-distant future, American astronauts will once again set foot on the moon’s silvery desolation. Instead of brief jaunts around the low-latitude frozen lava seas on the orb’s Earth-facing
Washington, DC, was hot and humid on June 23, 1993, but no one was sweating more than Daniel Goldin, the administrator of NASA. Standing outside the House chamber, he watched nervously as votes regist
I cry on a lot of planes, and often for no good reason. I did it just the other day, deep in the throes of a romance novel at 30,000 feet. I’m never a pretty, feminine weeper. Emily Henry’s Book Lover
About seven years ago, Aaron Silverbook and his then-girlfriend, a biologist, were perusing old scientific literature online. “A romantic evening,” joked Silverbook. That night, he came across a study
NASA has confirmed its Dragonfly rotorcraft mission to Saturn’s organic-rich moon Titan. The decision allows the mission to progress to completion of final design, followed by the construction and tes
I’ve been hearing and reading a lot about AI agents lately. Ezra Klein has been discussing them all month on his podcast, in a pretty excellent interview series. WIRED’s Will Knight wrote a newsletter