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 »
Perhaps the most well-known theory of dreaming is Sigmund Freud’s; he believed that dreams were a look into our subconscious and served as a valuable tool to better understand the human psyche. Despite the domination of Freud’s ideas in most psychology courses, researchers remain divided on what exactly causes dreams — particularly whether or not
Making Mayhem into Dreams Read More »
One of the most fundamental laws of thermodynamics states that entropy is always increasing. But what exactly is entropy? Simply put, entropy is a measure of randomness or loss of energy available to do work. Simply put, entropy is a measure of randomness or loss of energy available to do work. One of the first
A deadly rally in Charlottesville, a slew of mass shootings, a divisive general election, and an insurrection based on unfounded claims of voter fraud. The United States is more openly divided than it has been since the Civil War, and the extremist right wing of the country has become emboldened over the years. During the
Opinion: A profile of the alt-right and modern American conservatism Read More »