Which is heavier when the elevator goes up or down?
Elevators disrupt your sense of gravity in strange ways. You can feel it under your feet as the elevator rises. For a moment, the floor felt stronger than usual. As the elevator slows down, the pressure is relieved and your body becomes temporarily lighter. When you step on the scale in the rising elevator, the […]
History of Science: Discovery of Carbon-14 Opens Window on Past Civilizations — February 27, 1940
Milestone: Theorizing black hole radiation Date: March 1, 1974 Location: Cambridge, England People: Dr. Stephen Hawking In 1974, a brilliant 32-year-old physicist published a paper in Nature that was less than two pages long. And it overturned one of our fundamental assumptions about black holes. The author was Stephen Hawking, whose paper “Are Black Holes […]
Scientists made AI agents rougher and improved performance on complex reasoning tasks
Scientists have found that when artificial intelligence (AI) is able to act like human communicators, it reaches more accurate conclusions and becomes more effective debate partners. Human communication is full of stops and starts, impassioned interruptions, uncertain silences and ambiguity. AI, on the other hand, follows the formal communication style of computers: processing commands, formulating […]
Giant columns of organic molecules on Mars may be one of the best signs of life ever
Organic molecules found in Martian rocks cannot be fully explained by non-biological processes, and it is “reasonable to hypothesize” that life could have formed these strange organic molecules, a NASA-led team reports in a new study. However, he cautioned that this does not mean that scientists have found definitive evidence of life on Mars. In […]
‘We’re starting to discover even more strange things’: These strange animals can control their body temperature
In 1774, British physician and scientist Charles Blagden received an unusual invitation from a fellow physician. They would spend time in a small room that was “hotter than previously thought any living creature could tolerate.” While many may have been appalled by the offer, Blagden welcomed the opportunity for self-experimentation. He was surprised to find […]
Paleolithic humans invented ‘early predecessors of writing’ at least 40,000 years ago, engraved sign suggests
Humans first developed complex, information-rich writing around 3000 BC, when the Sumerians of southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) invented cuneiform. But new research suggests that precursors to writing can be found tens of thousands of years ago in carvings and tools made by Paleolithic hunter-gatherers in central Europe. When modern humans (Homo sapiens) first arrived in […]
This week’s science news: Spider webs on Mars, tigers returned to Kazakhstan, 2,000-year-old skull with permanently blackened teeth
This week’s science news is full of surprising space discoveries, led by the largest map of the chaotic gas cloud at the center of the Milky Way. New images captured in stunning detail by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Telescope (ALMA) radio telescope show a 650-light-year structure of gas surrounding the galaxy’s central black hole. This […]
Did the Vikings reach Maine?
In 1957, an amateur archaeologist working at a Native American site in Maine discovered a mysterious treasure. It is a 900-year-old Norse silver coin from the Late Viking Age (793-1066 AD). The artifact, also known as the “Maine Penny,” is now housed at the Maine State Museum. This discovery raised many questions. Primarily, how did […]
Archaeologists discover Stone Age boy in Sweden buried in deerskin and woodpecker headdress
More than 7,000 years ago, Stone Age mourners in what is now Sweden buried a young boy with a crown of woodpecker feathers, and in another grave buried a woman wearing colorful fur and feather footwear, a new study has found. Researchers say these details were unearthed thanks to newly developed technology that allows them […]
Passing this new AI exam (which its creators say is the world’s most difficult) could show the first signs of AGI
Researchers at the Center for AI Safety and Scale AI have published “Humanity’s Last Test.” It’s a test designed to measure how close today’s most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) models are to approaching or exceeding human-level knowledge across multiple domains. The test began in January 2025, but scientists first outlined the framework and the thinking […]