The universe bristles with structure on all scales. But really, it is all just punctuated nothingness. (Image courtesy of Cryhavoc) Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about nothing. Not just because focusing on nothing is a helpful, meditative antidote to obsessing over the recent barrage of anxiety-inducing news, but also because nothing is the most common thing in nature. After all, the overwhelming majority of the universe is not stars and planets; it is empty space. But empty space is ...read more

The interior view of a Tesla Model S sedan that has an Autopilot system representative of advanced driver assist technologies. Credit: Tesla When a 2015 Tesla Model S collided with a tractor trailer at highway intersection west of Williston, Florida, the resulting crash killed the Tesla driver. An investigation of the May 7, 2016 incident by federal investigators found that the Tesla car’s Autopilot driver-assist system was not at fault and showed that the driver had at least s ...read more

By Adam Reyer, Project Director for Global Fishing Watch Hundreds of millions of people depend on the ocean for their livelihoods, and almost 3 billion rely on it as a protein source. But countless threats — overfishing, destructive fishing practices, bycatch, dishonest catch reporting, habitat destruction — threaten our oceans and the people who depend on them. It’s an economic problem, too:  illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is a universal problem that accounts ...read more

The Brains vs Artificial Intelligence competition at the Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh. (Credit: Carnegie Mellon University) Roughly a year ago, to the day, Google researchers announced their artificial intelligence, AlphaGo, had mastered the ancient game of Go. At the time, Discover wrote that there was still one game that gave computers fits: poker. Not anymore. Late Monday night, a computer program designed by two Carnegie Mellon University researchers beat four of the world’s top no-li ...read more

In the long view, modern history is the story of increasing rights of control over your body – for instance, in matters of reproduction, sex, where you live and whom you marry. Medical experimentation is supposed to be following the same historical trend – increasing rights of autonomy for those whose bodies are used for research. Indeed, the Nuremberg Code, the founding document of modern medical research ethics developed after the Second World War in response to Nazi medical exper ...read more

Maybe you’re feeling like the animal you most identified with in previous years (panda bear in snow, puggle, Betty White) just isn’t adequate for 2017. If that’s the case, here are three creatures that would like to apply for the job. Only one is venomous. *** An adorbs hermit crab with candy-cane stripes [embedded content] Are you one of those people who wishes Christmas could be year round? Cute but a homebody? Friendly with creatures that others con ...read more

A slice of the 195-million-year-old fossilized rib of Lufengosaurus reveals vascular canals, many of which contain hematite, probably derived from the dinosaur’s blood when it was alive. Credit: Robert Reisz. We know the chances of finding dinosaur DNA are virtually nil. Despite recent advances, the oldest genetic material of any animal that researchers have successfully extracted and sequenced is about 700,000 years old (Note: still impressive. Most impressive). DNA degrades and gets con ...read more

A new paper challenges a decades-old theory in neuroscience: Split brain: divided perception but undivided consciousness According to the famous work of Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga, “split brain” patients seem to experience a split in consciousness: the left and the right side of their brain can independently become aware of, and respond, to stimuli. Split brain patients are those who underwent surgery to sever the corpus callosum, the nerve tract connecting the two hemispher ...read more

(Credit: Claudio Divizia/Shutterstock) To study the ancient history of the Earth, we should look to the moon. A new study from Japanese researchers reveals that for the past 2.4 billion years, the moon has been bathed in a stream of oxygen particles stripped from the Earth’s atmosphere. By combining measurements taken with the lunar orbiter Kaguya and studies of lunar rocks, researchers prove that Earth contributes it’s own unique whiff of elements to the moon’s surface. The ...read more