Can Evolution Make an Eye? - 12 Days of Evolution #4
Some of the biggest evolution questions finally answered.
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Why Are Some People Left-Handed?
We've got two perfectly good hands attached to two perfectly good arms, so why do most people prefer to use one over the other for common tasks?
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Are Dark Matter And Dark Energy The Same?
Astronomers are the worst at naming things. Dark energy AND dark matter? Who can remember which is which. But perhaps one astronomer has just fixed it, with a theory that says perhaps actually they are they same stuff.
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Our antimatter, mirrored, time-reversed universe
The foundations of quantum theory rests on its symmetries. For example, it should be impossible to distinguish our universe from one that is that is the perfect mirror opposite in charge, handedness, and the direction of time. But one by one these symmetries were found to be broken, threatening to break all of physics along with them.
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The crisis in cosmology
The search for a single number: the hubble constant, which is the rate of expansion of our universe, has consumed astronomers for generations. Finally, two powerful and independent methods have refined its measurement to unprecedented precision. The only problem is that they don’t agree. This calls into question some of our most basic assumptions about the universe.
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The Edge of an Infinite Universe
Have you ever asked “what is beyond the edge of the universe?” And have you ever been told that an infinite universe that has no edge? You were told wrong. In a sense. We can define a boundary to an infinite universe, at least mathematically. And it turns out that boundary may be as real or even more real than the universe it contains.
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Why String Theory is Wrong
There’s this idea that beauty is a powerful guide to truth in the mathematics of physical theory. String theory is certainly beautiful in the eyes of many physicists. Beautiful enough to pursue even if it’s wrong?
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Perpetual Motion From Negative Mass?
Challenge question: if 1kg of apples is $5 and 2kg is $10, how much is -1kg of apples? The answer? Priceless. Because you could use negative-mass apples to build warp drives, travel in time, and construct a perpetual motion machine. In fact that last one will be today’s actual challenge question.
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Sound Waves from the Beginning of Time
Invisible to the naked eye, our night sky is scattered with the 100s of billions of galaxies the fill the known universe. Like the stars, these galaxies form constellations – hidden patterns that echo the reverberations of matter and light in an epoch long before galaxies ever formed. These are the baryon acoustic oscillations, and they may hold the key to understanding the nature of dark energy.
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Secrets of the Cosmic Microwave Background
Hook up an old antenna to your TV and scan between channels. The static buzz you hear is mostly due to the ambient radio produced by our noisy pre-galactic civilization. But around one percent of that buzz is something very different – it’s the cosmic microwave background radiation.
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Will You Travel to Space?
The private space-race has been on for a while now. The attention has been on Space-X and Blue Origin with their reusable rockets. But there’s one private space program that’s been doing things a little differently. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic isn’t building rockets at all – it’s building spaceships. And I got to sit down and talk to him about it.
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The Holographic Universe Explained
We live in a universe with 3 dimensions of space and one of time. Up, down, left, right, forward, back, past, future. 3+1 dimensions. Or so our primitive Pleistocene-evolved brains find it useful to believe. And we cling to this intuition, even as physics shows us that this view of reality may be only a very narrow perception.
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No Dark Matter = Proof of Dark Matter?
We’ve been failing to detect dark matter for decades. Finally, the latest failure to detect dark matter may have actually proved its existence. One of these is true: either most of the matter in the universe is invisible and formed of something not explained by modern particle physics OR our understanding of gravity is completely broken.
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The Real Science of the EHT Black Hole
How do you take a picture of a black hole and what can we learn from it? Our first ever actual bona fide photo of a black hole, made by the Event Horizon Telescope and revealed to the world in a press conference on April 10th. Since then it’s got plenty of coverage, because … I mean look at it. It’s a freaking black hole. It’s black, it’s holey, it’s everything we hoped it would be.
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Why Does the Government Pay for Art?
Is art a public good? Why is the government even paying for art in the first place? Today, Danielle explores the US government's history of commissioning art and how that lead to the NEA.
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When We Took Over the World
From our deepest origins in Africa all the way to the Americas, by looking at the fossils and archaeological materials we have been able to trace the path our ancestors took during thee short window of time when we took over the world.
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Do Fish Pee?
You know you’ve wondered. Do fish actually pee? And what does that make the ocean… one big toilet?
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Are "Free" Video Games Really Free?
So-called “free-to-play” video games are raking in record profits for game companies. How do they get gamers to overspend on something that’s technically free and what can you do to protect your quarters?
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Why It's More Expensive To Be Poor
It’s not just a matter of having less money. For many people below the poverty line, some goods and services can actually be MORE expensive. How can that be?
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How Retailers Stalk You Online
They may not be listening in on your phone calls... but they don't have to. You're leaving breadcrumbs everywhere you go.
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What Are The Most Lucrative Trades?
With college tuition skyrocketing, many young people are looking to trade or vocational school as a lucrative alternative to a four-year degree. But which trades offer the most bang for your buck?
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How Smart Entrepreneurs Think About PRICES!
If you started selling a service or product today, how would you know how much to charge? Today we look at some of the underlying psychology that goes into setting the perfect price.
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What’s The Real Cost of Dying?
Since the human mortality rate seems to be holding steady at 100%, chances are you will have to make some death-related financial decisions for a loved one... or yourself!
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5 Strange Investor Crazes!
Every investor dreams of getting in on the ground floor on a success story like Amazon, Facebook, or Google. But if buying low and selling high is the touchdown, most the investment world is filled with people fumbling the ball left and right.
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Is dark energy getting stronger?
The power of Dark Energy may be increasing as the universe ages. Subtle clues are emerging that the accepted model for the nature of dark energy and dark matter may not be all that. We saw the first such clue recently in our recent episode on the Crisis in Cosmology. Today we’re doing a Space Time Journal Club to reveal another clue
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