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Two enlightening articles: Why People Believe Conspiracy Theories Why Do People Believe in Conspiracy Theories?

Let: $\displaystyle L=\lim_{n\to\infty}\left(\sqrt{n^2+n}-\sqrt[3]{n^3+n^2}\right)$ Find $L$...and show your work to get 1,000 CH cash (1,500 CH cash for proofs that don't rely on L'Hôpital's Rule).

New AI algorithm taught by humans learns beyond its training Researchers have designed an algorithm that learns directly from human instructions, rather than an existing set of examples, and outperformed conventional methods of training neural networks by 160 per cent. But more surprisingly...

Distant star is roundest object ever observed in nature Scientists measure the shape of Kepler 11145123 with unprecedented precision Stars are not perfect spheres. While they rotate, they become flat due to the centrifugal force. A team of researchers has now succeeded in measuring the...

Supercomputer comes up with a profile of dark matter Extension of the Standard Model predicts properties of candidate particle In the search for the mysterious dark matter, physicists have used elaborate computer calculations to come up with an outline of the particles of this unknown form of...

How to merge two black holes in a simple way The merger of two black holes, such as the one that produced the gravitational waves discovered by the LIGO Observatory, is considered an extremely complex process that can only be simulated by the world's most powerful supercomputers. However, two...

NASA's Fermi finds record-breaking binary in galaxy next door Scientists have found the first gamma-ray binary in another galaxy and the most luminous one ever seen. The dual-star system, dubbed LMC P3, contains a massive star and a crushed stellar core that interact to produce a cyclic flood...

ssXRR0cWd9I For those of you that don't know, Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science communicator. Since 1996, he has been the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. The center is...

Hey robot, shimmy like a centipede Devices mimic creature's surprising unstable advantage Researchers have used computer simulations and robotics to uncover a surprising insight into the mechanics of locomotion, namely that taming instability -- a factor that might be a disadvantage -- is a...

Watching the brain do math Brain activity patterns reveal distinct stages of thinking that can be used to improve how students learn mathematical concepts A new neuroimaging study reveals the mental stages people go through as they are solving challenging math problems. Insights from this new...

Ripples in fabric of space-time? Hundreds of undiscovered black holes New research shines startling light on star systems that host hundreds of black holes Computer simulations of a spherical collection of stars known as 'NGC 6101' reveal that it contains hundreds of black holes, until now...

Hubble discovers rare fossil relic of early Milky Way A fossilized remnant of the early Milky Way harboring stars of hugely different ages has been revealed by an international team of astronomers. This stellar system resembles a globular cluster, but is like no other cluster known. It contains...

I was doing a bit of reading last night on how the heat index is computed, and I discovered that the concept of the heat index was first devised by a meteorologist local to my area, George Winterling. George is retired now, but most people in the Jacksonville area over the age of 30 will likely...

Jim Bob and Ellie May live exactly 10 miles apart along a straight road, and they wish to ride their bicycles to meet because their kin are a feudin' and they must meet in private. They depart their homes at precisely the same time, and cycle towards one another each at a steady pace of 5 mph...

Suppose a motorist is going over a hill...it is one mile up to the top and one mile from the top to the bottom on the other side. On the way up the hill, the motorist travels 30 miles per hour...how fast must the motorist go down the hill so that his/her average speed over the entire hill is 60...

Do black holes have a back door? One of the biggest problems when studying black holes is that the laws of physics as we know them cease to apply in their deepest regions. Large quantities of matter and energy concentrate in an infinitely small space, the gravitational singularity, where...

Researchers chip away at Smale's 7th unsolved problem in mathematics How do you arrange a group of points on the surface of a sphere so that all the points are as far apart from each other as possible? With two points, the answer is easy: place them on opposite sides of the sphere, as if they...

CP violation or new physics? Over the past few years, multiple neutrino experiments have detected hints for leptonic charge parity (CP) violation—a finding that could help explain why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter. So far, matter-antimatter asymmetry cannot be explained by...

Making computers reason and learn by analogy Using the power of analogy, a new structure-mapping engine gives computers the ability to reason like humans and even solve moral dilemmas.

Robots come to each other's aid when they get the signal Sometimes all it takes to get help from someone is to wave at them, or point. Now the same is true for robots. Researchers have completed work on a project aimed at enabling robots to cooperate with one another on complex jobs, by using...