Science

During the COVID-19 lockdown last year, I lived with some messy people. I’d moved into a house that I shared with a wonderful couple of brothers. They were almost everything you could ask for in a set of housemates. Friendly, funny, respectful of your privacy . . . genuinely great people in almost every respect.

After I published the analysis regarding the mirage of cryptocurrencies, I received an irresistible invitation: an IT consultant offered to give me a demonstration, in front of the laptop, of the connection between cryptocurrencies and the black market. The exercise turned into a three-hour discussion on cybersecurity and ended with unexpected conclusions about identity theft for political purposes.

Our planet may be fittingly compared to the 1994 film, Speed: A bomb is planted on a bus and rigged to explode when the bus slows to less than 80 kilometres per hour. The bus barrels through Los Angeles, hitting obstacles and endangering the lives of passengers and pedestrians until a solution is found.

Very few ordinary people seem to be overflowing with passion for quantum physics, as the field involves a high degree of abstraction and relatively complicated mathematical equations.

"Strange as it sounds, scientists still do not know the answers to some of the most basic questions about how life on Earth evolved. Take eyes, for instance. Where do they come from, exactly?" These are the words with which an extensive article published by The Guardian in June 2022 begins.

"[B]ut test them all; hold on to what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

If science were a religion, how violent would it be compared with Christianity?

There have now been over 12 million cases of COVID-19 infection globally, and half a million deaths. Researchers are constantly looking for new and better information to reduce the uncertainty around the virus.

Out of the endless series of events we experience, some we remember, and others we do not. Some often come to mind and we relish recounting them, while others we wouldn’t reveal for anything in the world.

While few people can remember the details of their first hit, everyone can identify with the rush of satisfaction, the tingling delight that starts on the tip of your tongue and then courses through your entire body.

The first time he saw a living human brain, neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta says it became “a powerful and life-changing experience."

Sleep is perhaps the most important, complicated, and misunderstood physiological mechanism that keeps us alive.

The increased frequency with which doctors are encountering antibiotic-resistant bacteria is worrying. And it could affect an already precarious medical field—cancer treatment.

Even if half of us refer to creativity as a rare trait that only the other half has, in reality, creativity is much like a muscle: the more we use it, the more creative we become.

There’s a 1995 clip from The David Letterman Show where Letterman is interviewing Bill Gates. Gates excitedly explains how the internet will change the future. Letterman is sceptical. He mentions a baseball game that had recently been broadcast live on the internet. “Does radio ring any bells?” he quips sarcastically, to laughter from his audience.