Whether it’s stressing about an upcoming deadline, date, or performance, most of us are all too familiar with the encroaching dread of anxiety. In essence, anxiety is our body’s way of telling us to be alert and vigilant, but sometimes our limbic system can go a bit overboard. Anxiety originates in the amygdala, which is the brain’s emotional center, and was once a useful tool in the minds of our Paleolithic ancestors.But that was hundreds of thousands of years ago. Nowadays, most of us ar ...read more
Physicists consider black holes one of the most mysterious objects that exist. Ironically, they’re also considered one of the simplest. For years, physicists like me have been looking to prove that black holes are more complex than they seem. And a newly approved European space mission called LISA will help us with this hunt.Research from the 1970s suggests that you can comprehensively describe a black hole using only three physical attributes – their mass, charge and spin. All the other pro ...read more
Sir Percival Pott, a London physician in 1775, felt sorry for chimney sweeps. They were child laborers who Pott thought were treated cruelly. They were poorly fed, barely clothed, and forced to ascend into sooty chimneys. Too often, Pott saw they were “bruised, burned, and almost suffocated.”In his practice at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, Pott observed a tragic trend among the young chimney sweeps. Many of them suffered from scrotal cancer by the time they reached puberty. Pott connected th ...read more
Why so blue? This most calming color has woven itself into the fabric of our language, and it’s hard to imagine a world without the azure hue of the ocean or sky. However, there’s some evidence to suggest that the people of the past didn’t see the same world that we do, or, at least, didn’t describe it in the same way.Historical records in various languages, from ancient Greek to ancient Hebrew, make no explicit references to blue, despite having terms for other hues like black and red. ...read more
Viruses are a mysterious and poorly understood force in microbial ecosystems. Researchers know they can infect, kill and manipulate human and bacterial cells in nearly every environment, from the oceans to your gut. But scientists don’t yet have a full picture of how viruses affect their surrounding environments in large part because of their extraordinary diversity and ability to rapidly evolve.Communities of microbes are difficult to study in a laboratory setting. Many microbes are challengi ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine