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Read more: The Predator Wars: How Man Changed the American West
In the fading light of a 19th-century prairie evening, a rifle’s crack shatters the silence. A wolf collapses in the sagebrush, and a triumphant rancher collects his prize – another predator eliminated. Scenes like this played out thousands of times across the American West. For more than a century, a war was waged on wolves,…
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Read more: Are Interstellar Objects Alien Spacecraft? The Mystery of ‘Oumuamua
In late 2017, astronomers in Hawaii spotted an object hurtling through our solar system that defied all expectations. It was small, elongated, and moving so fast that the Sun’s gravity could not hold onto it. This visitor was quickly recognized as the first interstellar object ever observed up close – meaning it came from another…
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Read more: Blue Zones: Places Where We Live Longer & Why
High in the mountains of Sardinia, Italy, a 95-year-old shepherd sets out at dawn, trekking up and down rocky hills with his goats. Half a world away on the Japanese island of Okinawa, a 100-year-old woman begins her day tending a small vegetable garden, later meeting her lifelong friends for a chat and green tea.…
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Read more: Could Our Consciousness Exist in Another Spatial Dimension?
Consciousness is the simple word for the complex processes of how we experience our world. Each of us has a vivid inner life that accompanies the firing of neurons in our brain. Yet the nature of consciousness remains one of the greatest mysteries in science. How does the soggy, electric tissue of the brain produce…
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Read more: A New Dawn for Psychedelics – Microdosing and the Road to Legalization
In the mid-20th century, psychedelic substances like LSD and psilocybin mushrooms went from scientific curiosities to symbols of the counterculture. In the 1950s and 60s, researchers explored LSD’s potential to treat mental illness, and some psychiatrists reported promising results. But by the late 1960s, these hallucinogens escaped the lab and exploded into popular use, sparking…
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Read more: Universe 25: Is This Failed Science Experiment Humanity’s Future?
1972: researcher John B. Calhoun peered into a sprawling mouse habitat that had fallen eerily silent. This enclosure, once brimming with the scurrying activity of thousands of mice, was now a wasteland. Only a few dozen rodents remained alive, and even those survivors seemed listless and on the brink of death. It was as if…
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Read more: Weapons: America’s Dark Obsession with Witch Hunts
Weapons is one of biggest horror films of the year and the Junji Ito-esque picture opens up a conversation about the nature of witch hunts. The film takes place in a quiet Pennsylvania town where 17 children vanish into the cold darkness without a trace. Panic grips the community. Neighbors cast suspicious eyes at those…
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Read more: The Citrus Crisis: Why are Orange Crops Failing?
In the early morning light, Florida’s orange groves once glistened with promise – rows of emerald-leaved trees crowned with sun-bright fruit. For generations, these citrus orchards were a source of pride and prosperity. The scent of orange blossoms would drift for miles, and harvest time brought an abundance so vast it seemed inexhaustible. Yet today,…
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Read more: The Gaia Hypothesis – Is Earth a Super Organism?
Picture Earth not as a rock with life scattered across its surface, but as a single, self-regulating organism. Its oceans act as blood, circulating nutrients. Its forests are lungs, exhaling oxygen and drawing in carbon. Its atmosphere is a thin skin, holding in warmth and filtering cosmic rays. This was the vision crystallized in the…
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Read more: Will the Wolves of Chernobyl Cure Cancer?
When the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in April of 1986, it created what seemed like an eternal scar on the Earth. Radiation poured into the air, soil, and rivers. Entire towns were abandoned, crops were poisoned, and the world watched in horror at the first great nuclear disaster to unfold under the unforgiving eye of…
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Read more: Sheep Dreaming of Androids: A History of Artificial Life and Our Obsession with Playing God
Lightning explodes above what could be a dark laboratory… or a workshop… a lone scientist (or is it a priest?) leans over his bench, piecing together scraps of metal, wood, or clay, determined to breathe life into the lifeless. This scene – now archetypal in human imagination – has appeared in countless forms across world…
