By now, you’ve probably seen a rash of breathless headlines, inspired by the recent Nobel Prize in Physics, proclaiming that physicists have proven “The Universe Isn’t Real!” It’s an exciting idea—my mind immediately leapt to what it could mean for me personally. If the universe isn’t real, nothing I do matters. I can have that…

Around the Planetary Broadcast Network water cooler, the conversations can get pretty technical. Sure, we talk about sports and entertainment as well, but our staff is quite diverse and well-read, so we often end up chatting about the latest research in Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Archaeology, Anthropology, and the like. A few days ago, we were…

In 1758, Swedish physician and father of modern taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus, named the species to which we all belong Homo sapiens. Since then, other taxonomists have suggested there isn’t sufficient difference between the genera Homo and Pan (the genus of the chimpanzee and bonobo), arguing that we should really be called Pan sapiens. Under either…