Author: Frederick Stankus

Real spaces, not digital ones, will fix our politics.

In 1898, American psychologist Edward Thorndike published a seminal dissertation on animal intelligence. Thorndike, then at Columbia University, had spent hours experimenting with cats and special contraptions of his own design: puzzle boxes, confined spaces the cats could only escape by, for example, pawing at levers in order to trigger a release mechanism. Once out, […]

The elephant researcher tells her story.

New fossil evidence shows sophisticated thought began earlier than we thought.

Births, deaths, and other time travel paradoxes.

A few months ago, my aunt sent her colleagues an email with the subject, “Math Problem! What is the answer?” It contained a deceptively simple puzzle: She thought her solution was obvious. Her colleagues, though, were sure their solution was correct—and the two didn’t match. Was the problem with one of their answers, or with […]

The new moon night was dark and rich in stars. The line at the bottom of the steps was 200 deep and growing. This was a busy public night at the Martz/Kohl Observatory atop Robin Hill, in Frewsburg, New York, and the rickety old ladder up to the eyepiece of our biggest ‘scope was getting […]

Why Fotini Markopoulou traded quantum gravity for industrial design.

The origin of quantum noise is the modern incarnation of a millennia-old debate.