People have been asking why space is dark despite being filled with stars for so long that this question has a special name – Olbers’ paradox.Astronomers estimate that there are about 200 billion trillion stars in the observable universe. And many of those stars are as bright or even brighter than our sun. So, why isn’t space filled with dazzling light?I am an astronomer who studies stars and planets – including those outside our solar system – and their motion in space. The study ...read more

Not everyone is a morning person. Some of us work better in the late hours than at the crack of dawn. But most jobs in our society are still geared towards the nine-to-five, forcing those who perform better at night into a schedule that doesn’t always catch them at their best.“If you are an early bird, work is perfect for you because the world revolves around your schedule,” says Sina Kianersi, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School. But night owls, or those who tend to stay up late a ...read more

Anyone who has a brain can’t help but be interested in the buzzy class of supplements known as nootropics. Already a $10 billion+ industry, nootropic supplements and treatments offer an almost irresistible promise: to enhance brain function and general cognition, including superior focus, sharper thinking, and better memory.For the millions of people suffering from cognitive decay (and the families who have to watch it happen), nootropics offer a kind of Hail Mary pass, a last-ditch effort to ...read more

Animals are a noisy bunch. They babble and they bleat, and they chirp and croak and coo. And it's no wonder why, since sound is one of the main mediums through which animals can communicate.Studies suggest that there are around 10,000 species of birds and around 6,000 species of mammals that possess the ability to produce sounds, not to mention the sound-makers in the reptilian and amphibian taxa, among others. For these animals, sounds are the trick to survival. They allow their makers to find ...read more

Geoscientists have a good idea of how earthquakes happen. The Earth’s crust — which is on average 22 miles deep — is broken into continental and oceanic plates that rub against one another other due to the movement of molten rock in the Earth’s mantle. Over the decades and centuries, pressure builds at the points where the tectonic plates converge, until the plates crack and the pressure is released, sending shockwaves in all directions. On the moon, however, things aren't quite the same ...read more

When Italy’s national soccer team took on the Soviet Union in the semi-finals of the European Championship in 1968, the score was 0-0 at the end of the game and a further period of extra time failed to separate the two sides. The rules of the time dictated that in these circumstances, the game should be decided by the toss of a coin. Italy’s captain Giacinto Facchetti called correctly, and Italy proceeded to the final, which they eventually won.A coin toss is often considered the fairest way ...read more

You've probably heard that it's a poor idea to suppress negative or disturbing thoughts. Suppressed emotions remain in the unconscious and can affect our moods and behaviors even if we're unaware of them. Based on that thinking, many psychotherapy techniques, particularly for illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), involve dredging up suppressed emotions and memories. By dealing with them, the emotions won't muck around in the unconscious, stealthily in ...read more

Depending on the heart rate your doctor measures during your annual checkup, you might get a stamp of approval — or a raised eyebrow and questions about your overall health.But a new study confirms that a normal resting heart rate isn't the same for everyone. Data from over 92,000 FitBit-wearers were analyzed in a new PLOS ONE paper, showing that average resting heart rates ranged between 40 and 109 beats per minute (BPM). Though not all of those rates are necessarily healthy, the study did fi ...read more

Apollo 7 sent a trio of astronauts into space in 1968, making it the first successful crewed NASA mission. But about 15 hours into the flight, astronaut Wally Schirra began developing the symptoms of a bad head cold, with the rest of his team following suit. Balancing a fog of symptoms, including sniffles and congestion, on top of their heavy workload was a recipe for misery. Considering the extensive training and screening astronauts go through to ensure they’re in optimal health for missions ...read more

As winter approaches, bears and other hibernators — from butterflies to box turtles — begin preparing to clock out until spring. Us humans, on the other hand, find ourselves stuck all-too-consciously contemplating the frozen months ahead. In winter, everything feels twice as hard: getting dressed, shoveling snow, averting existential meltdown. Wouldn’t it be nice to ring in the new year, promptly tunnel down some dark burrow, and curl up to wait for better days?There’s no clear path to h ...read more