In many ways, science is a discussion. Many within the community know all too well about the rivalries and bickerings between academics and scientists, the workplace politics that plague every human endeavor. However, the way that we’re usually taught science emphasizes facts: 1 + 1 = 2, the Earth is a sphere, and gravity will […]
Trusting the dialectics of science Read More »
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, in 2020, 82.4 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced from their homes, almost double the number in 2010. Forty-two percent of displaced people in 2020 were children. The number of refugees worldwide is rising, but the United States is accepting less and less. In Barack Obama’s last full
Fields once green and lush, pockmarked and rife with forgotten land mines. Two cities, hundreds of thousands of lives, gone in an instant. Shrapnel in trees, poisoned air, scorched earth. These are the devastating effects of war. Like carbon emissions, oil spills, and deforestation, most of the environmental disasters we face today are man-made. War
War! What is it good for? Destroying the environment Read More »
Everyone knows the color wheel; red, yellow, and blue combine to make orange, green, and purple, all of which combine to make the spectrum. While this system works well for understanding pigments, it breaks down when considering mixtures of light, where red and green make yellow and white is a tertiary color. To explain these
Color: The most beautiful lie ever told Read More »
The 2016 presidential election and victory of Donald Trump marked the start of a period scholars call the “post-truth” era. While this concept isn’t new, a post-truth society is characterized by the absence of shared objective standards for truth in favor of appeals to emotion or personal beliefs. Today, many politicians appeal to the emotional
Post-truth politics and the future state of knowledge Read More »
At first glance, the English, Hindi, Russian, and German languages seem quite different from one another. They use seemingly unique sounds, letters, and ways of translating ideas into words. Thus, it may come as a surprise to learn that these languages are all descended, so to speak, from a common ancestor, much like all the
On the origin of languages: Our Proto-Indo-European roots Read More »
DNA is the genetic information in each of our cells that encodes specific genes and characteristics. Although this source of genetic information seems like something that should be stable and unchanging, it can be influenced by the randomness of physics phenomena, and these resulting genetic changes can drive evolution. Spontaneous genetic mutations, potentially explained by
The quantum probability of genetic mutations Read More »
The time is 4:59 pm. It’s nearly the end of the business day and still no emails. You’ve been waiting to hear back from that company you interviewed with two weeks ago for a position you were certain you would be offered. 5:00 pm hits and an email arrives, but to your surprise, it’s a
Harmonizing Your Thoughts: Cognitive Dissonance and How to Relieve It Read More »
Suppose Earth’s clock is reset to its very beginning. This would take us back over 4.5 billion years, passing the first human around 7 million years ago and the first microscopic organism 3.5 billion years ago. Then, we let the clock rerun. Would life evolve as it did for humanity, or is our existence a
One data point: Bayesian inference and the likelihood of life Read More »