Category: Progress
-
Sacred mountain. Unholy science.
A mountain which used to be sacred, is for many years now a place for science. Following a protracted legal battle and years long protests that left a state deeply divided, the Hawaii Supreme Court in November 2018 cleared the final legal hurdle for a $1.4 billion telescope project to resume construction atop the Big…
-
String theory. Incompatibilities. Scientific progress.
In string theory, a paradigm shift could be imminent. In June 2018, a team of string theorists from Harvard and Caltech published a conjecture which sounded revolutionary: String theory is said to be fundamentally incompatible with our current understanding of “dark energy” — but only with “dark energy” can we explain the accelerated expansion of…
-
Narcissism. Knowledge. A whispering voice…
A researcher at Queen’s University Belfast suggests that the growing rate of narcissism in society could be linked with school achievement. (1) Modern civilization. Increasing knowledge. Growing narcissism. Growing arrogance. It takes a really brave man to admit he knows nothing. It takes a really arrogant man to claim he knows something. We have left…
-
Copying nature. For what?
Sunlight reflected by solar cells is lost as unused energy. The wings of the butterfly Pachliopta aristolochiae are drilled by nanostructures (nanoholes) that help absorbing light over a wide spectrum far better than smooth surfaces. Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have now succeeded in transferring these nanostructures to solar cells and, thus, enhancing…
-
Are we getting less violent? No. (And we cannot)
Scientists battle over whether violence has declined over time. Contrary to a popular idea among researchers, modern states haven’t dulled people’s long-standing taste for killing each other in battle, a controversial study concludes. But living in a heavily populated society may up one’s odds of surviving a war, two anthropologists proposed. As a population grows,…
You must be logged in to post a comment.