Inference

The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope are now just a few days away. Casey Papovich, an astronomer who will using data in his research, explains how is poised to answer deep questions about the nature of planets and the formation of the first galaxies.

A First Year of Discovery | Casey Papovich | Inference The first images from the largest and most advanced orbiting optical observatory to date—NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope—will be released on July 12. As one of the scientists who will be using the Webb, Casey Papovich examines how it may help answer deep questions about the nature of exoplan...

Origin of life research is in trouble. Laboratory conditions cannot replicate prebiotic scenarios, meaning studies that purport to explain the emergence of life in fact explain nothing at all.

A Storm in a Primordial Teacup | A Storm in a Primordial Teacup | Inference Origin of life research is in trouble. Laboratory conditions cannot replicate prebiotic scenarios, meaning studies that purport to explain the emergence of life in fact explain nothing at all.

The Antikythera mechanism, an astronomical calculator found in a first-century BCE shipwreck, has proven to be mechanically more sophisticated than anything known from the subsequent millennium.

A Mirror of Nature | Mike Edmunds | Inference The Antikythera mechanism, an astronomical calculator found in a first-century BCE shipwreck, has proven to be mechanically more sophisticated than anything known from the subsequent millennium. Yet rather than being an anachronism, the mechanism testifies to the reality of such complex machines in....

In Imperial Science, Bruce Hunt details how the desire for quick communications across the British Empire, drove progress in the physical sciences towards a theory of the electromagnetic field. Read the book review by David Kordahl.

Agents in the Ether | David Kordahl | Inference In the late nineteenth century, research in electromagnetism became intertwined with the Victorian British Empire’s ambitions to install a global network of submarine telegraph cables. In Imperial Science, Bruce Hunt details how the desire for quick communications from London to Egypt, and then on...