ToK Essays Nov 2024

By chewing on the problems posed by “extremal” black holes, physicists have exposed a surprising and universal connection between energy and entropy.

The psychic lives of nonhuman dreamers reveal colours, harmonies and beauties of which we had little inkling until now

Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time premiered on 15 January 1941 in the prisoner-of-war camp where the composer was interned during World War Two

There is not just one sort of mind. Different sorts of minds can then be described in terms of what they can and can’t do.

The Big Tech platforms drive us towards feelings of shame and profit off of that spiral of shame, explains Cathy O'Neil

There have been five recognized mass extinctions in the history of life on Earth, and a number of smaller ones. They include, in order: Ordovician (444 million years ago; mya) - climate change caused by continental drift Devonian (360 mya) - volcanic eruptions Permian (250 mya) - unknown, could be asteroid strike, eruptions, climate change

Asteroid 2021 UA1, a space rock about the size of a refrigerator, made a surprise appearance when it recently flew past Earth.

Since 1950, global fertility rates have decreased steadily. Now. the average woman has less than 3 children on average.

Art made by AI subverts our usual understandings of creativity as a uniquely human power.

In the past three decades, suicides involving guns have steadily dropped around the world. While down overall in the US since 1990, they began to climb in 2006 – coinciding with increased access to firearms

Theoretical physicists develop a mathematical model to explain how birds dip and dive in whirling flocks.

Celebrity psychologist and podcaster Jordan Peterson’s views on climate change show a fundamental misunderstanding of scientific models

David Saxon celebrates the great Victorian physicist

“Music has a unifying effect on the peoples of the world, because they all understand and love it… And when they find themselves enjoying and loving the same music, they find themselves…