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Entropy and the Arrow of Time — Why Yesterday Is Different From Tomorrow
Why can you remember the past but not the future? Why does a broken cup never reassemble itself? The answer lies in one of the deepest and most relia…
3 months, 1 week ago
Nuclear Fusion — The Star in a Bottle
Fusion is the reaction that powers the Sun, and for seventy years it's been the great dream of clean energy — limitless fuel, no carbon, no long-live…
3 months, 1 week ago
The Big Bang — The First Three Minutes
The Big Bang is probably the most misunderstood idea in science — starting with the fact that it wasn't an explosion in space, but an expansion of sp…
3 months, 1 week ago
Cyclones, Hurricanes and Typhoons — Engines of the Warm Ocean
A tropical cyclone is the most powerful storm on Earth, and it's really a gigantic heat engine running on warm ocean water. We explain how these stor…
3 months, 1 week ago
The Origin of Life — From Chemistry to Biology
How did non-living chemistry become living biology? It's one of the deepest open questions in science, and while we don't have the answer, we've lear…
3 months, 1 week ago
Electricity and Magnetism – One Force, Two Faces
Electricity and magnetism feel like separate phenomena — one lives in wires and lightning, the other in fridge magnets and compasses. One of the grea…
3 months, 1 week ago
The Sun – The Engine That Runs Everything
Almost every scrap of energy you use — the food you eat, the wind, the fossil fuels, the light of day — traces back to one object: an ordinary star, …
3 months, 1 week ago
The Microbiome – The Trillions Living Inside You
You are not, strictly speaking, a single organism — you're a walking ecosystem, home to trillions of bacteria that outnumber your own cells and carry…
3 months, 1 week ago
Saturn's Rings – A Structure That Shouldn't Last
Saturn's rings are the most beautiful sight in the solar system and also a bit of a scandal — they may be far younger than the planet, and they're di…
3 months, 1 week ago
Climate Change – The Physics Behind It
Set aside the politics for a moment: at its core, climate change is a physics problem, and the physics has been understood since before the light bul…
3 months, 1 week ago