Not long ago the search for extraterrestrials was considered laughable nonsense. Today, it’s serious and scientific

The cochlear question

As the hearing parent of a deaf baby, I’m confronted with an agonising decision: should I give her an implant to help her hear?

Abi Stephenson

The nature of natural laws

Physicists and philosophers today have formulated three opposing models that explain how laws work. Which is the best?

Mario Hubert

The radical activist couple who fought for social change in the courtroom

21 minutes

Is beauty natural?

Charles Darwin was as fascinated by extravagant ornament in nature as Jane Austen was in culture. Did their explanations agree?

Abigail Tulenko

Elusive but everywhere

A new theory argues that unseen ‘fields’ guide all goal-directed things in the Universe, from falling rocks to voyaging turtles

Daniel W McShea & Gunnar O Babcock

The forces of chance

Social scientists cling to simple models of reality – with disastrous results. Instead they must embrace chaos theory

Brian Klaas

Settling accounts

Before he was famous, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was Louise Dupin’s scribe. It’s her ideas on inequality that fill his writings

Rebecca Wilkin

Rage against the machine

For all the promise and dangers of AI, computers plainly can’t think. To think is to resist – something no machine does

Alva Noë