It’s hardly surprising that modern languages and their respective words change over time. History and literature have demonstrated this repeatedly.Something that is less clear, however, is the degree to which a given language changes and shapes its human speakers. (It’s an important question, considering there are roughly 7,000 languages currently active on Earth.)To put it more specifically: Might native French speakers, for example, tend to think a particular way because of the language th ...read more

As the world's oceans have spiked a record-setting fever in recent weeks, scientists are trying to work out the precise causes. You can see the dramatic rise in global sea surface temperature in this unsettling graph: Since early March, the global average sea surface temperature has increased to a record high, jumping above those seen during the strong El Niño year of 2016. Also shown in this graph are SSTs from the warm El Niño years of 2002/2003, 2009/2019 and 2015, along with 2022, a relati ...read more