Science

Beanbag genetics

Today a bitter dispute about the nature of biology is underway. A simple bag of beans may be what tips the balance

Zachary B Hancock

Legacy of the angels

When medieval scholars sought to understand the nature of angels, they unwittingly laid the foundations of modern physics

Rebekah Wallace

The bookends of time

Nothing lasts forever: not humanity, not Earth, not the Universe. But finitude confers an indelible meaning to our lives

Thomas Moynihan

Beyond causality

In order to bridge the yawning gulf between the humanities and the sciences we must turn to an unexpected field: mathematics

Gordon Gillespie

How the Moon became a place

For most of history, the Moon was regarded as a mysterious and powerful object. Then scientists made it into a destination

Danny Robb

The birth of naturalism

The modern era is often seen as the triumph of science over supernaturalism. But what really happened is far more interesting

Peter Harrison

Chemical laws

Often dismissed as the poor cousin of the sciences, chemistry has revealed natural laws that illuminate our Universe

Vanessa A Seifert

Exploding the Big Bang

It was thought that science could tell us about the origins of the Universe. Today that great endeavour is in serious doubt

Daniel Linford

The eugenicist of UNESCO

Why did Julian S Huxley, first director of the UN agency, think eugenics held the key to a more evolved, harmonious world?

Stefan Bernhardt-Radu

The city of wisdom

Don’t be intimidated by physics: it is made of stories and metaphors. Learn these and the field will open up to you

Jamie Zvirzdin

The rarely told story of the fruit flies, primates and canines that preceded us in space

12 minutes

Stars behaving absurdly

For centuries, the only way in which to illuminate the mysteries of black holes was through the power of mathematics

Steve Nadis & Shing-Tung Yau

Forwards, not back

Medicine aims to return bodies to the state they were in before illness. But there’s a better way of thinking about health

Kate MacCord & Jane Maienschein

Clock time contra lived time

Henri Bergson and Albert Einstein fundamentally disagreed about the nature of time and how it can be measured. Who was right?

Evan Thompson

Chasing ghost particles

Without the neutrino, the Universe might be an empty void. But this inscrutable particle isn’t giving up its secrets easily

Corey S Powell

Mere imitation

Generative AI has lately set off public euphoria: the machines have learned to think! But just how intelligent is AI?

Deepak P

Empowering patient research

For far too long, medicine has ignored the valuable insights that patients have into their own diseases. It is time to listen

Charlotte Blease & Joanne Hunt

We are not machines

Welcome to the new post-genomic biology: a transformative era in need of fresh metaphors to understand how life works

Philip Ball

His radiant formula

Stephen Hawking’s greatest legacy – a simple little equation now 50 years old – revealed a shocking aspect of black holes

Roger Highfield