Science
Why has a behaviour that is widespread in the natural world and has recurred many times throughout human history become subject to one of the strongest human taboos? By Kasper Kalinowski On 9 March 1945, at 9 am, the commander of a Japanese battalion, Major Matoba – who was later taken
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FR PROF. MICHAŁ HELLER, cosmologist: The mathematics underlying multiverse theory can enchant. But some people find these concepts infuriating. By Fr Michał Heller, Łukasz Kwiatek, Tomasz Miller ŁUKASZ KWIATEK, TOMASZ MILLER: How did it come about that science started talking about the "multiverse" — the existence of universes other
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They don't catch thieves, don't detect drugs, and their positive impact on our health is questionable. So what exactly are cats for? By Zuza Lamża At the end of 2019, sad news spread across the media: after a long struggle with a bone disease, Lil Bub
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In antiquity, board games enjoyed enormous popularity across every culture and social class. To understand why, archaeology had to break free of a 19th-century vision of humanity — and turn to digital methods. By Kamil Kopij You buy a board game. You open the box, tip out dozens of tokens
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American universities have been taken over by a "safety culture." Psychologists disagree on what its long-term consequences will be. By Jarek Gryz A woman and a man walk into a car dealership intending to buy a car. Though the car is for her, the salesman addresses himself
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The adaptive immune system is one of the most complex products of evolution. Many of its mechanisms remain poorly understood. By Magdalena Kulma Although the COVID-19 pandemic has somewhat skewed our perspective, it remains a fact that hundreds of years of scientific and medical progress have taught us how
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Astronomical observations suggest that the matter we know makes up only a few percent of everything that exists. By Sebastian J. Szybka Science reveals that reality has many layers, some of which are not directly accessible to our senses. Physicists, reaching into one of these layers – the quantum world of
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The extinction of the dinosaurs, the emergence of pollinating insects and fruit trees, intercontinental journeys – a great many things had to happen in the world before the apes could be born from which humans would evolve. By Łukasz Kwiatek Under almost every article and video about human evolution, you can
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Members of the scientific consortium known as FlyWire first scanned fruit fly brains in detail using an electron microscope, then identified 140,000 neurons and 54.5 million connections between them, and provided their full description. By Łukasz Kwiatek More than 120 years have passed since the pioneering work of
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Sir Roger Penrose on his path to understanding reality. An interview with the physicist who described the universe like no one before him. By Marta Emilia Bielińska Marta Bielińska: Some people have favorite numbers, but a Nobel Prize-winning physicist probably needs to be asked something more abstract. Do you
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Michael Morris, cultural psychologist: The rise of tribes expanded our circle of trust. Today we can trust a complete stranger if they speak our language, practice the same profession, or share the same ideals. By Kasper Kalinowski and Michael Morris Kasper Kalinowski: Aristotle described man as a "social animal,
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How did it come about that the civilizations created by the Romans, the Maya, and the inhabitants of Easter Island came to an end? It is easy to conclude that there is no hypothesis too absurd for some scholar to have put forward. By Kamil Kopij At the end of