Since the 1950s, humanity has been searching for extraterrestrial life with increasingly sophisticated tools. But after decades of space probes, meteorite analysis, radio telescopes, and UFO investigations, what have we actually found? A new piece of analysis by a...
One of the most elegant theories about the origins of life on our planet is that it was kick-started by a delivery from outer space. This idea suggests that prebiotic molecules—the building blocks of life—were transported here by asteroids or other celestial bodies....
Speed matters. When an X-ray photon excites an atom or ion, making a core electron jump onto a higher energy level, a short-lived window of opportunity opens. For just a few femtoseconds, before an electron fills the void in the lower energy level, a second photon has...
In a study published in Physical Review Letters, physicists have demonstrated that black holes satisfy the third law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy remains positive and vanishes at extremely low temperatures, just like ordinary quantum systems. The...
Past psychology and behavioral science studies have identified various ways in which people’s acquisition of new knowledge can be disrupted. One of these, known as interference, occurs when humans are learning new information and this makes it harder for them to...
