Features
In-depth analysis and opinion from the worlds of science and emerging technology.
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Despite the headlines, there’s limited evidence that using large language models – like Claude and ChatGPT – is rotting the brain. But there’s enough cause for concern.
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Does the brain really produce its own psychedelic “Spirit Molecule” to power our dream states and near-death experiences? A new study has sparked fresh debate over endogenous DMT, and its presence – or absence – in mammalian brains.
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The Artemis II mission, which will return US astronauts to lunar space, has run into problems that have critics demanding NASA remove the crew from the flight for safety reasons. The bigger question is, why do we have astronauts at all?
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A nuclear production facility in Washington state, called the Hanford site, once forged the plutonium that reshaped the world. Now it’s forging glass; a quiet act of undoing at one of Earth’s most contaminated sites.
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A landmark clinical trial testing the effect of microdosing LSD on symptoms of ADHD recently delivered its first data readout and the results have been surprising, to say the least, raising questions over the efficacy of this popular trend.
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Nuclear waste. We've all heard about it but what exactly is it and why is it so important? How big is the problem and is it a problem without a solution? New Atlas takes a look at the basics.
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How do we separate the movie myths of Tyrannosaurus rex from the actual animal? The Victoria the T-rex exhibition sets the record straight with recent discoveries about what T-rex looked and sounded like, how it sensed the world, and how it hunted.
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This may be about as wildly entertaining, disruptive and philosophically profound as legitimate scientific research gets. Michael Levin's work in cellular intelligence, bioelectrical communication and embodied minds "is going to overturn everything."
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The Soviet Union launched the Sputnik 1 satellite in 1957. Fast forward to 2022, and we are now launching more than a thousand satellites each year, propelling the field of Earth science into unprecedented terrain.
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Tiny fragments of plastic are now strewn across the entire globe and are beginning to show up in different parts of the human body. But what are the health risks associated with ingesting and inhaling this now omnipresent synthetic material?
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With helicopters on Mars, private crewed missions, robotic probes flying into the Sun's atmosphere, and Captain Kirk boldly going to the final frontier, 2021 was a bumper year in space exploration. Here's a look at the top stories in the Cosmos.
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Unless you're really into trivia about gas lanterns and the mantles that make their light so bright, you've probably never heard of thorium, but you may hear a lot more about it in the future. This unassuming metal could one day rival uranium as the nuclear fuel of choice.
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