Space & Missions
As Mars’s atmosphere thinned and its surface became cold, dry and irradiated…
We may be looking for Martian life in all the wrong places—and at depths we cannot yet reach.
Space & Missions
The case for Enceladus as a potentially habitable world does not rest on…
Saturn's icy moon harbors the chemical ingredients for life—and evidence suggests its hidden ocean is actively mixing with rock, creating the conditions where microbial life might actually survive.
Psychology
Psychology suggests self-taught people may solve problems differently from most…
There's an odd question that turns up in cognitive psychology research, not often enough to be a settled field but enough to form a pattern: could learning outside the normal path shape how you approach certain kinds of problems?
Psychology
Psychology suggests people who browse social media but never post aren't…
There is a particular kind of social media user who barely registers in the public conversation, mostly because they barely produce one.
Space & Missions
Why the plutonium powering Voyager could fit in a milk carton, and how that tiny…
Picture a one-litre milk carton sitting on your kitchen counter. That is, in volume terms, roughly all the plutonium-238 dioxide fuel carried aboard each…
Human Behaviour
Why names are easy to forget: working-memory load and weak semantic hooks can both…
I used to apologize for this constantly. Someone would introduce themselves and within thirty seconds their name was simply gone, dissolved into the general texture of the exchange like it had never arrived.
Space & Missions
Why hasn't the universe produced more civilizations? The answer might be that Earth…
I've argued before that we will probably find alien life in the next 50 years. I still think the case for that is strong.
Human Behaviour
Forgiveness, reduced comparison, and selective social networks are associated with…
There is a version of getting older that looks like shrinking. The world gets smaller.
Universe
The head of NASA is now openly campaigning to make Pluto a planet again
Pluto's most powerful new advocate is now the head of NASA. On Tuesday, April 28, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman testified before the U.S.
Space & Missions
A startup few people had heard of four years ago is now valued at $2.2 billion
Mark this one as the moment orbital defense became its own asset class. On April 28, Colorado-based True Anomaly announced a $650 million Series D fundraise that values the four-year-old startup at $2.2 billion.
Space & Missions
NASA flew a four-pound helicopter on Mars
For decades, NASA’s surface explorers were landers that stayed in place or wheeled rovers.
Human Factors
The brutal reality of trying to build a home on Mars
Mars has been the answer for as long as humans have been able to look up at it. Domed cities.
Human Factors
The 90-year-old who became the oldest person in space
Imagine being ninety years old, strapping into a rocket, and shooting yourself out of the atmosphere.
Human Factors
Astronauts call it the “overview effect”
Picture this. You're above Earth, strapped into the International Space Station.
Human Behaviour
One mark of a genuinely intelligent mind may not be quick answers, a good memory…
The smartest person I knew in school was not the one who gave the fastest answers.
Human Behaviour
Why some older adults appear unfazed by distress, and what resilience research…
I have a close friend whose mother is in her late seventies. She grew up in rural Victoria in the 1950s, one of five kids, father who worked the land, no central heating, no money to speak of.