Up the Cosmic Distance Ladder

What We Know / by Lee Billings / October 19, 2009

The development of astronomy can be seen as a millennia-long quest to measure and know the true scale of the natural world.

Now In Ideas

  • Evolved for Extinction?

    Could the novel evolutionary adaptations of animals like the Galapagos tortoise and the Komodo dragon actually leave these species more vulnerable to extinction?

  • Folding Our Way to a Revolution

    With a few strands of nucleic acids and some ingenious programming, DNA origami is remaking nanotechnology, from drug delivery to chip design.

  • Microbial Warfare

    Antibiotic resistance is more than just a medical scourge; it’s also a window into a war microbes have been waging against each other for hundreds of millions of years.

  • Our Shifting Urban Landscape

    Urban ecologist James Danoff-Burg takes us into the field to demonstrate the tools of analyzing the biodiversity of human-altered ecosystems.

  • Uncovering Ardi

    Anthropologist John Hawks explains why Ardi, the oldest known skeleton of a human-like primate, matters so much to the science of human origins.

  • The Dead Zone Dilemma

    Is saving our atmosphere killing our seas? Biofuels may stifle global warming, but scientists warn that agricultural runoff causes new problems.

  • Blueprinting Biology

    Scientists develop a visual language for mapping biological systems that they hope will become “the circuit diagrams of biology.”

  • Altruism vs. Selfishness

    The idea that evolution explains selfishness well and altruism poorly is starting to stink. Can we please bury it now?

  • Erasing Dark Energy

    Why do we need dark energy to explain the observable universe? Two mathematicians propose an alternate solution that, while beautiful, may raise even more questions than it answers.

  • Rethinking Addiction

    What makes someone an addict? The clinical definition of drug “dependence” is flexible, but may still mislabel individual choices as disorders.

Research Blogging

Sweet Obesity

As obesity rates soar, Americans are consuming more low-calorie artificial sweeteners. But do artificial sweeteners actually help people lose weight?

Research Blogging

Dave Munger

Overhyped Placebos of Doom?

Despite centuries of investigation, scientists still have much to learn about the origins and meaning of the placebo effect.

Research Blogging

Dave Munger

Saturn’s Strange Children

Spacecraft observations of giant tenuous rings, two-toned moons, and methane fogs are showing Saturn’s moons to be even more alien than previously believed.

Analysis

A Writing Revolution

Nearly universal literacy is a defining characteristic of today’s modern civilization; nearly universal authorship will shape tomorrow's.

Now on SEEDMAGAZINE.COM

  • World

    Sad Sacks

    As a UK adviser is fired over politically unpalatable advice and an English teacher is suspended over an article about animal sexuality, the fate of facts is on the line.

  • Ideas

    Sweet Obesity

    As obesity rates soar, Americans are consuming more low-calorie artificial sweeteners. But do artificial sweeteners actually help people lose weight?

  • Books

    Books to Read Now

    November releases feature the mysteries of Grigori Perelman, the evolutionary origins of reading, and strategies for containing strains of flu.

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Video: Seed revisits the questions C.P. Snow raised about science and the humanities 50 years by asking six great thinkers, Where are we now?

Saved by Science

Audio slideshow: Justine Cooper's large-format photographs of the collections behind the walls of the American Museum of Natural History.

The Universe in 2009

In 2009, we are celebrating curiosity and creativity with a dynamic look at the very best ideas that give us reason for optimism.

Revolutionary Minds
The Interpreters

In this installment of Revolutionary Minds, five people who use the new tools of science to educate, illuminate, and engage.

The Seed Design Series

Leading scientists, designers, and architects on ideas like the personal genome, brain visualization, generative architecture, and collective design.

The Seed State of Science

Seed examines the radical changes within science itself by assessing the evolving role of scientists and the shifting dimensions of scientific practice.

A Place for Science

On the trail of the haunts, homes, and posts of knowledge, from the laboratory to the field.

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