Articles for author: Sameen David

Cosmology Says the Darkest Patches of Sky Between the Stars Are Not Empty - They Are Filled With Something That Outweighs All Visible Matter Combined and That Science Has Been Unable to Directly Detect for Fifty Years

Cosmology Says the Darkest Patches of Sky Between the Stars Are Not Empty – They Are Filled With Something That Outweighs All Visible Matter Combined and That Science Has Been Unable to Directly Detect for Fifty Years

Sameen David

You have probably stared up at the night sky and assumed that the black spaces between the stars are just nothingness. It feels natural to think that way: bright dots are “something,” dark patches are “empty.” But modern cosmology says you’ve got that backward. Those apparently empty regions are where most of the universe’s matter ...

14 Physics Discoveries From the Last Decade That Caused Theoretical Scientists to Formally Revise Models They Had Defended for Twenty Years

14 Physics Discoveries From the Last Decade That Caused Theoretical Scientists to Formally Revise Models They Had Defended for Twenty Years

Sameen David

You probably think of physics as this rock-solid monument of truth: equations carved in stone, constants that never change, and models that have been nailed down for generations. But if you look closely at the last decade or so, you see something a lot more dramatic. You see Nobel-level surprises, thousand-person collaborations, and quiet revolutions ...

Physics Says Empty Space Is Not Empty - It Seethes With Particles Flicking In and Out of Existence and the Energy Contained in a Cubic Centimeter May Be Immeasurable

Physics Says Empty Space Is Not Empty – It Seethes With Particles Flicking In and Out of Existence and the Energy Contained in a Cubic Centimeter May Be Immeasurable

Sameen David

If you could somehow scoop up a tiny cube of what you call “empty space” and put it under a cosmic microscope, you wouldn’t find nothing. You’d see a boiling, restless foam of activity, with fields fluctuating and particles flashing into existence and then vanishing again before you could blink. It sounds like science fiction, ...

Marine Biology Says Roughly Half the Oxygen You Are Breathing Right Now Was Produced by Ocean Organisms Too Small to See - Unknown to Most of the People Who Depend on Them to Survive

Marine Biology Says Roughly Half the Oxygen You Are Breathing Right Now Was Produced by Ocean Organisms Too Small to See – Unknown to Most of the People Who Depend on Them to Survive

Sameen David

Right now, as you breathe in, about every second lungful owes its existence to living things you will never see with your naked eye. You probably picture forests, big trees, and lush green leaves when you think about oxygen, but behind the scenes, countless microscopic ocean organisms are quietly doing as much of the work ...

Astrophysics Says the Andromeda Galaxy Is Already Gravitationally Interacting With the Milky Way - and the Merger That Will Reshape Both Has Been in Progress Since Long Before Humans Existed

Astrophysics Says the Andromeda Galaxy Is Already Gravitationally Interacting With the Milky Way – and the Merger That Will Reshape Both Has Been in Progress Since Long Before Humans Existed

Sameen David

You tend to imagine cosmic disasters as sudden, explosive events: a star going supernova, an asteroid slamming into a planet, a black hole tearing something apart. But the biggest transformation facing your home galaxy is almost painfully slow. Long before humans walked the Earth, before the dinosaurs, even before complex life crawled out of ancient ...

Cosmology Says the Universe Has a Sound Recorded From the Oldest Light in Existence - and the Note It Is Playing Is 57 Octaves Below Anything the Human Ear Can Detect

Cosmology Says the Universe Has a Sound Recorded From the Oldest Light in Existence – and the Note It Is Playing Is 57 Octaves Below Anything the Human Ear Can Detect

Sameen David

You live in a universe that, long before there were stars, planets, or people, literally rang like a gigantic bell. That cosmic ringing left ripples in the oldest light you can see, and from those ripples, scientists have figured out that the universe has a “note” – an unimaginably deep tone, fifty‑seven octaves below anything ...

Evolutionary Science Says the Reason Humans Instinctively Fear Spiders and Snakes in Places Where Neither Has Ever Been Encountered Is That the Threat Was Encoded Into the Brain Before the Modern Landscape Existed

Evolutionary Science Says the Reason Humans Instinctively Fear Spiders and Snakes in Places Where Neither Has Ever Been Encountered Is That the Threat Was Encoded Into the Brain Before the Modern Landscape Existed

Sameen David

You know that tiny jolt you feel when you spot a spider in the shower or a snake in a nature documentary, even if you’ve never actually been in danger from either one? That reaction is so fast and so visceral that it almost feels like it bypasses thought entirely. You might even laugh it ...