One of the great questions for humanity is whether we are alone in the universe. Indeed, astrobiologists appear tantalizingly close to being able to spot the signs of life on other Earths — should it exist elsewhere — using modern observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope. Now a group of astronomers have taken this question further by asking whether life could exist in other universes. In other words, they want to know whether we are alone in the multiverse. And they have develope ...read more
Four decades ago, philosopher Hilary Putnam described a famous and frightening thought experiment: A “brain in a vat,” snatched from its human cranium by a mad scientist who then stimulates nerve endings to create the illusion that nothing has changed. The disembodied consciousness lives on in a state that seems straight out of The Matrix, seeing and feeling a world that doesn’t exist. Though the idea was pure science fiction in 1981, it’s not so far-fetched today. Over the past decad ...read more
Metacognition is a fancy word for "thinking about thinking." We all do it, but how we do it can mean the difference between exacerbating depression and getting over it. When thoughts pop into our heads, they usually pop right back out. But sometimes we invest a lot of importance to them. If you do that, explains Aaron Brinen, assistant professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, you're going to pay much more attention to them. Then these thoughts begin to mean something; yo ...read more
Just a few weeks ago, city officials in Lake Elsinore, Calif., shut down their trails to prevent members of the public from disrupting a potential superbloom of golden poppy flowers in the region. The shutdown was to prevent chaos from breaking out over people trying to view the flowers, much like what happened in Lake Elsinore in 2019 when a different superbloom took place. But what exactly is a superbloom, and why are people so intent on seeing one? The Basics of a Superbloom Superbl ...read more
About 3,000 years ago, the ancient Scythians were a force to be reckoned with. Beginning with their emergence from Iran around 900 B.C. until the peak of their power, during the 4th century B.C., the nomadic tribes who all shared aspects of Scythian culture were spread across Eurasia. Their territory once stretched more than a million square miles, from the edges of China and India to eastern Europe, beyond the Black Sea. In this domain, more than two dozen tribes thrived, including such groups ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine