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Science & Tech
Explore the discoveries that reveal how the world works, alongside the technologies that extend, reshape, and sometimes challenge what’s possible.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
We think of physical reality as what objectively exists, independent of any observer. But relativity and quantum physics say otherwise.
While ice itself is slick, slippery, and difficult to navigate across under most circumstances, skaters easily glide across the ice.
The highest-energy particles could be a sign of new, unexpected physics. But the simplest, most mundane explanation is particularly iron-ic.
Our Universe doesn't just expand and cool, but the expansion itself is accelerating. Can stars form under such structure-erasing conditions?
54mins
“How can all the diversity and, sort of, seeming order that's out there in the world emerge from a process dependent upon chance?”
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Earth orbits the Sun while spinning on its tilted axis, with two annual occasions marking that maximal tilt. That's where solstices arise.
By tracking brain activity as primates move freely in the wild, neuroethology could reshape what we think we know about our own minds.
The Department of Energy's newest mission seeks to make a unified AI platform across all national labs. Will it help US science, or kill it?
Big Think and the John Templeton Foundation gathered scientists, artists, and storytellers in Los Angeles to explore the power of awe.
Our Standard Model of the Universe, for both particle physics and cosmology, remains intact for now. When will its foundations crack?
With the observation of SN 2025wny, a lensed superluminous supernova, astronomy's future comes into sharp, exciting focus.
It takes a wide variety of processes in the Universe to make all the elements that populate space today. We're still discovering new ones!
As technology advances, more opportunities for cheating arise. Large language models aren't posing a new problem; they're how students cheat themselves.
11mins
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“The next revolution will be quantum computers that will make the digital computer look like an abacus.”
There are two sides to the AI debate, and both are perpetuating the idea that AI is “inevitable, all-powerful, and deserves to be controlled by a tiny group of people,” says the Empire of AI author.
Science isn't absolute. Its truths and discoveries enable us to approximate reality, but we must always remain open-minded to revisions.
The method you use to measure the expanding Universe determines which of two answers you'll get. Lensed supernovae can't resolve that issue.
Scientific truths remain true regardless of belief. These 10, despite contrary claims, remain vitally important as 2025 draws to a close.