Ideas / Theory
Erasing Dark Energy
Wide Angle / by / September 24, 2009
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.
Now In Theory
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Illuminating Dark Economies
Measuring economic activity from outer space is a new frontier in the struggle to quantify humanity’s impact on the natural world.
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The Asymmetry of Life
Look into a mirror and you’ll simultaneously see the familiar and the alien: an image of you, but with left and right reversed.
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Because E=mc2
On the beauty and significance of the world’s most oft-cited but less oft-understood equation.
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Mapping the Brain’s Highways
Neuroscientists are mapping out a complete atlas of connectivity in the human brain, but what’s emerging is a battle of scales.
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Knowing How to Pick a Fight
Paul Ehrlich believes in provocation and speculation, forcing us to consider: If not for the provocateurs, would we pay attention?
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Ants and Neurons
Insect colonies offer insight into the mysterious conversations of neurons, illuminating how billions of individual brain cells work in concert to make a single decision.
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The Deepest Links
Evolution is a tinkerer. When novel features evolve, old parts are co-opted for new roles.
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The Extinction Oscillator
Sometimes, something kills nearly all life on the entire planet. But is there a regular cycle to this creation and destruction of Earth’s biodiversity?
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Invoking the Magic of the Mind
Are secrets of the evolution of the mind to be found by imagining the ancestors of tool-wielding crows, or is such an approach strictly for the birds?
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Critical Mass
For particle physicists who study phase transitions, a traffic jam is simply a solid made up of idling cars.
Wide Angle
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.
The idea that evolution explains selfishness well and altruism poorly is so dead that it is beginning to smell.
Altruism vs. Selfishness
By David Sloan Wilson
Bibliologue
Richard Dawkins Seeks Converts
In his new book, Richard Dawkins sets out to convince the unconvinced that evolution is true. Will he succeed?
Featured Blogger
PZ Myers
Not Just for Fence-Sitters
Dawkins’ new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, demonstrates the power of storytelling in communicating evolution’s biological evidence.
Now on SEEDMAGAZINE.COM
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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.
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Ideas
Sweet Obesity
As obesity rates soar, Americans are consuming more low-calorie artificial sweeteners. But do artificial sweeteners actually help people lose weight?
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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.
