What is clear is that the brain must be able to accurately regulate how strong a mental image is to avoid confusion between fantasy and reality. “The brain has this really careful balancing act that it has to perform,” Naselaris said. “In some sense it is going to interpret mental imagery as literally as it… Continue reading Is It Real or Imagined? How Your Brain Tells the Difference.
Tag: Quantum Stuff
A Rare Glimpse into Afghanistan’s Spectacular, Vanishing Forests
WAMA DISTRICT, NURISTAN, AFGHANISTAN—When Dilaram comes into view through the trees, he’s standing astride the felled trunk of a huge cedar, the chainsaw in his hands straining as it spews smoke and sawdust. It’s 10:30 A.M., and the air is filled with the smell of conifer needles and two-stroke exhaust. Forty-year-old Dilaram, who goes by… Continue reading A Rare Glimpse into Afghanistan’s Spectacular, Vanishing Forests
Is Time Travel Possible?
In the movies, time travelers typically step inside a machine and—poof—disappear. They then reappear instantaneously among cowboys, knights or dinosaurs. What these films show is basically time teleportation. Scientists don’t think this conception is likely in the real world, but they also don’t relegate time travel to the crackpot realm. In fact, the laws of… Continue reading Is Time Travel Possible?
Science, Not Legalized Discrimination, Should Drive Health Care Policy
If you’ve gotten a free flu shot, mammogram or diabetes screening lately, there’s a good chance you can thank the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare. Unfortunately, a recent court decision may take that coverage away from millions of Americans. Some 20–40 percent of U.S. deaths from cancer, heart disease and other leading causes of… Continue reading Science, Not Legalized Discrimination, Should Drive Health Care Policy
Renate Loll Blends Universes to Unlock Quantum Gravity
Quanta Magazine > 0; if (typeof predicate !== ‘function’) { throw new TypeError(‘predicate must be a function’); } var thisArg = arguments[1]; var k = 0; while (k We care about your data, and we’d like to use cookies to give you a smooth browsing experience. Please agree and read more about our privacy policy.Agree… Continue reading Renate Loll Blends Universes to Unlock Quantum Gravity
The Bad Side of ‘Good’ Cholesterol
Tanya Lewis: Hi, and welcome to Your Health, Quickly, a Scientific American podcast series! Josh Fischman: On this show, we highlight the latest vital health news, discoveries that affect your body and your mind. Every episode, we dive into one topic. We discuss diseases, treatments, and some controversies. Lewis: And we demystify the medical research… Continue reading The Bad Side of ‘Good’ Cholesterol
How 3D Changes in the Genome Turned Sharks Into Skates
The marine creatures called skates skim along the sea bottom, rippling their winglike pectoral fins to propel themselves and to stir up small creatures hiding in the sand. Their unusual flattened body plan makes them one of the oddest families of fish in the sea, and it seems even odder that they evolved from streamlined,… Continue reading How 3D Changes in the Genome Turned Sharks Into Skates
Deadly African Drought Wouldn’t Have Happened without Climate Change
Year after year after year the life-sustaining seasonal rains in the Horn of Africa have simply failed to fall. Heat has scorched the soils dry. Crops have shriveled up. Millions of livestock have died. Millions of people face severe food shortages, and several hundred thousand are on the verge of starving to death. Though the… Continue reading Deadly African Drought Wouldn’t Have Happened without Climate Change
Physicists See ‘Strange Matter’ Form inside Atomic Nuclei
A new physics result two decades in the making has found a surprisingly complex path for the production of strange matter within atoms. Strange matter is any matter containing the subatomic particles known as strange quarks. “Strange” here refers, in part, to a profound remoteness from our everyday lives: strange matter only seems to show… Continue reading Physicists See ‘Strange Matter’ Form inside Atomic Nuclei
The Tiny Physics Behind Immense Cosmic Eruptions
During fleeting fits, the sun occasionally hurls a colossal amount of energy into space. Called solar flares, these eruptions last for mere minutes, and they can trigger catastrophic blackouts and dazzling auroras on Earth. But our leading mathematical theories of how these flares work fail to predict the strength and speed of what we observe.… Continue reading The Tiny Physics Behind Immense Cosmic Eruptions