St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, is best known for bringing Christianity to the Emerald Isle, but his story is chock-full of other legends and miracles, too. It’s been said that the missionary raised dozens of people from the dead, for example, and even banished all of Ireland’s snakes into the sea following a 40-day fast. Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the science doesn’t quite back up this latter claim. While it’s true that the Irish don’t have any snakes to deal wit ...read more
Yes, sound can definitely produce heat. But you can’t cook food from yelling at it (sorry Gordon Ramsey). What we call sound is really a patterned, regular, ordered movement of individual particles. When we speak to each other, we force air through the small opening of our throat and shape it with our mouths. This makes the air molecules bunch together in specific patterns on their way out. Those air molecules then expand again, pushing against their neighbors, which makes them contract, and s ...read more
I was standing in line for a tourist attraction in Tokyo when a small robot began addressing the crowd. The robot resembled Rosey from The Jetsons and was meant to amuse people while they waited. It babbled for a while, and then its eyes turned into two pink hearts. “I love everyone,” it announced. “Oh, really?” I responded sarcastically. I couldn’t help myself. “Everyone? That’s disingenuous.” The Tokyo robot was one of many robots and other forms of artificial intelligence (A ...read more
On Aug. 3, 2019, only hours after a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, which left 23 people dead, a familiar talking point reared its head: video games were to blame. The question of whether video games incite real-world violence among kids and teens has been sparking controversy — and headlines — for decades. But despite more than 20 years of investigation, researchers have failed to prove a causal link between playing violent video games and committing acts of violence. What's more, a longit ...read more
One of the great scientific projects of our time is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence or SETI — the hunt for evidence of technologically advanced civilizations elsewhere in the galaxy. The current manifestation of this endeavor is the Breakthrough Listen Initiative, which uses radio telescopes to look for signals that cannot have a terrestrial origin. The big challenge in this effort is combing through massive data sets — hundreds of hours of data at multiple frequencies. Research ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine