Astronomy
Voyager and SETI: Looking for Universal Messages
The SETI Institute’s task is the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. The search is focused in a narrow spectrum which we assume intelligent beings would use. […]
History of Science
Astronomy
Looking for Faraway Exoplanets
Detecting exoplanets cannot be done directly, so scientists look for gravitational wobbles and planetary transit clues to find them. […]
History of Science
Aliens in Fiction: Literary and Movie Representations
The portrayals of alien life in fiction – both novels and film – tend to come in four varieties: aggressive, exploratory, cooperative, and transcendental. […]
History of Science
‘Homo Economicus’: Are We Rational Self-interested Beings?
The notion of ‘homo economicus’ was an idealization. Modern psychology has shown that often we make decisions based on completely non-rational bases. […]
History of Science
The Business Cycle: Challenging Classical Economic Equilibrium
British economist John Maynard Keynes argued that there are multiple possible equilibrium points and it’s possible for the economy to become stuck around one of these undesirable points. […]
History of Science
Finding Equilibrium: The Physics of Classical Economics
In classical economics, the idea was that we ought to be able to model the flow of money in the marketplace on our vision of energy flowing in a physical system. […]
History of Science
Waiting for Unity: When Will We Get a Theory of Everything?
Humans have taken a few centuries to refine ideas of what moves the universe, but a theory of everything is still some time away. […]
History of Science
Fundamental Forces: A History of Unifying Forces
Over the centuries, our ideas of fundamental forces have changed, as a multiplicity of forces have been reduced to even fewer fundamental forces. […]
History of Science
A Fundamental Building Block and Force
To get a theory of everything, we need one fundamental building block and one fundamental force; but we have many more than those right now. […]
History of Science
Social Facts and Necessities for a Healthy Society
Social facts are external things that become a part of an individual’s life without them even realizing it. For example, putting on trousers is a social fact, a norm that people do without thinking and because the society wants them to. However, they are not always so easy and simple. […]