Science Talk

A grassroots online movement has helped shift the way scientists think about asexuality. But much is still unknown. This is part four of a four-part series on the science of pleasure.

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Researchers once faced death threats for asking women what gives them pleasure. Now they’re helping individuals and couples figure it out themselves. Part three of a four-part series on the science of pleasure.

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Research shows rough sex is becoming more common. Dominatrices are helping the general public catch up. Hosted by Meghan McDonough, this is part two of a four-part series on the science of pleasure.

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Part one of a four-part series on the science of pleasure, hosted by Meghan McDonough.

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Individual interventions for burnout don’t work. Researchers explain why. Hosted by Shayla Love.

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On April 8, we’re in for a treat. A total solar eclipse will be visible across a broad swath of North America, giving us a view of the edges of the sun as the moon passes in front of its face. 

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Portugal is one of the most vulnerable countries in Europe to climate change. Straddling the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic regions, it’s part of a climate change hot spot. Some of the biggest fuels are shrubs. One study found that shrubland covers 1.6 million hectares in Portugal—about 18 percent of the nation’s land area. And those shrubs are gaining ground. That’s because, for decades, people have been moving out of rural communities such as the one Tommy Ferreira lives in. Most leave to pursue better-paying jobs in the cities or in wealthier European Union countries. Portugal has lost 30 percent of its rural population since 1960. The same trend is occurring across the Mediterranean region. Abandoning these farmlands is increasing wildfire risk, according to an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development report released last spring. When people who work the land leave it, grazing pastures and farm fields become thick with fuels. But these ancient Maronesa cattle can help solve both of these modern-day problems. It was a solution hiding in plain sight.

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For the last decade, reports of UFO sightings have filled headlines and news broadcasts, and some of these have from a surprising place—the Pentagon. Former defense officials have made a number of claims about, and released videos of, strange sightings made by military pilots.

These days, the objects are officially called “UAPs”—unidentified anomalous phenomena.

But regardless of the new branding, Congress has demanded answers on them, especially after one former official this summer claimed that he believed that the U.S. possessed “nonhuman” spacecraft and possibly their “dead pilots.”

We talk to the former intelligence official and physicist, Sean Kirkpatrick, who until December headed the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the Pentagon office that Congress told to find some answers to all this. He recently published an op-ed in Scientific American called  "Here's What I Learned as the U.S. Government's UFO Hunter".

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Experts are starting to plan for the moment when a quantum computer large enough to crack the backbone of the math that keeps things secret will be turned on.

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