RealClearScience

What Are the Most Energy-Efficient Reactions in Physics? There are all sorts of reactions in the Universe that emit energy: from biological ones to chemical ones to geological, stellar, gravitational, and even nuclear processes. But it isn’t just the

"Many reactions emit energy, often in large amounts, but cosmic efficiency is another metric altogether. Here's how to maximize your output." via @bigthink.com www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/17/w...

Leak in Earth's Core May Be Pushing Ancient Gold Upward Tree-covered hills stand watch over a yawning hole in the ground. The giant pit steps down in stages, its concentric rings growing ever smaller the deeper it goes. Huge trucks rumble up and down these

"Precious metals may be escaping from the planet’s core. This hotly debated subject could help us understand Earth’s evolution and determine whether life exists elsewhere in the Universe." via @sciencefocus.bsky.social www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/17/l...

The FDA's Leucovorin Fiasco Is Worse Than You Think The Food and Drug Administration is looking less and less like a regulator than a circus, with fresh, disconcerting episodes erupting week after week. Last week, the FDA stunned scientists and energiz

Under Trump, the FDA is a fiasco. "Each time political imperatives override methodological discipline, the Agency’s technical credibility and public legitimacy are eroded." www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/17/t...

Formate Could Finally Bring About the Bio-Manufacturing Revolution The global chemical industry sits at a crossroads. For more than a century, it has relied on fossil fuels—both as feedstock and as energy—to make the materials that underpin modern life. T

Formate... "offers a simple yet powerful solution for the next industrial era: transforming CO₂ from a liability into a vital part of the supply chain." www.realclearscience.com/articles/202...

Earth’s Disastrous 10th Tipping Point Has Been Identified “Climate change” is a scary, catch-all term that summarizes all the anthropogenic degradation humans are inflicting on the planet. In reality, climate change is only one of the many threat

Widespread ocean deoxygenation could be a 10th planetary tipping point. www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/17/e...

Astronomers Are Unveiling the 'Skeleton' of the Universe The universe is a vast, unseen loom, weaving galaxies into an intricate cosmic web through invisible threads of matter. This cosmic web is the fundamental scaffolding of everything we see, dictating w

"The universe is a vast, unseen loom, weaving galaxies into an intricate cosmic web through invisible threads of matter. This cosmic web is the fundamental scaffolding of everything we see, dictating where galaxies form and how they evolve." www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/17/a...

Pompeii's House of Dionysian Delights As dusk settled over Pompeii, guests strolled into the grand home of one of the city’s wealthiest families for an evening of drinks and delights. Household staff led these privileged Pompeians t

Go inside an indulgent dinner party in ancient Pompeii celebrating the god Dionysus. www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/16/p...

Beyond Amyloid: Emerging Drug Targets for Alzheimer's When the US Food and Drug Administration approved the first amyloid-β-targeting monoclonal antibody to treat Alzheimer’s disease in 2021, it was a big move—and a controversial one. Re

A sea change in Alzheimer's drugs: “It used to be . . . 70% of the programs in clinical development were antiamyloid programs and anti-tau programs and 20%, 30% were alternate pathways,” Fillit says. “But now it's exactly the reverse.” via @cenmag.bsky.social www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/16/b...

Three Unique Ways Smart People Think People often picture intelligence as mental efficiency. We tend to imagine a smart person as someone who responds quickly, has strong opinions, and sees things clearly. However, highly intelligent peo

"Highly intelligent people are not always faster, calmer, or more decisive. Sometimes, their minds are busier, slower, and more conflicted." www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/16/t...

NASA Has a New Problem to Fix Before Artemis II NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said Saturday the agency is looking at ways to prevent the fueling problems plaguing the Space Launch System rocket before the Artemis III mission. Artemis III is sla

NASA has a new problem to fix before the next Artemis II countdown test. via @arstechnica.com www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/16/n...

13 Great Lakes’ Worth of Water Underlies the Contiguous U.S. It’s not easy to determine how much water there is across a landscape. A measly 1% of Earth’s freshwater is on the surface, where it can be seen and measured with relative ease. But beneat

13 Great Lakes’ Worth of Water Underlies the Contiguous United States. www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/16/1...

You Don't Have to Be Sore to Get Results From Exercise Maybe you've started exercising after the new year? For many, sore muscles follow in the days afterwards. This soreness typically appears after hard or unfamiliar exercise and usually peaks 24 to 48 h

You don't need to be sore to get results from exercise. It's more about repetition. www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/16/y...

A New Paper Might Just Change My Mind About Life We live in a polarized age.  It’s hard to find a subject on which people’s views haven’t been politicized and hardened.  From Bad Bunny’s halftime performance to new

It might only take rock weathering to keep a planet habitable, according to a new paper. "Maybe planets don’t need life to stay habitable. Maybe, I was wrong. Maybe I need to change my mind." by @adamfrank4.bsky.social www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/14/a...

The Gold Rush of Testosterone Replacement Therapy If you’ve never injected yourself with dog semen, don’t worry: someone has done it for you. Seventy-one years after the initial publication of Frankenstein, the medical journal T

"Taking testosterone in old age is safer than we first thought but its benefits are still overblown." via @mcgilloss.bsky.social www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/14/t...

The Secret to Better Sex Isn't Better Sex If your partner had to list three things you don’t enjoy in bed, would they get them right? The odds are against it. Research shows that partners correctly identify only about 62 percent of what

Communication about sex is key: "Most partners are guessing and only accurately identify a fraction of what their partner enjoys or dislikes." www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/14/t...

Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Dissolving? None of the leading interpretations of quantum theory are very convincing. They ask us to believe, for example, that the world we experience is fundamentally divided from the subatomic realm it’

"The phenomenon of decoherence might finally bridge the quantum-classical divide." via @quantamagazine.bsky.social www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/14/a...

America's Healthier Past Is a Myth “Make America healthy again” sounds like a great slogan. It is loaded with nostalgia and … haziness. What is that “again” all about? When were those halcyon days when Am

Underlying a lot of RFK, Jr.'s ideas is the notion that Americans were healthier in the past. It isn't true. via @mcgilloss.bsky.social www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/14/a...

Why gentle parenting is doomed to fail: "Children are active evolutionary agents adapted to extract the maximum resources from their environment." www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/13/w...

"It’s one of modern mathematics’ most challenging problems. How close are we to solving the Mandelbrot set’s final obstacle?" via @sciencefocus.bsky.social www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/13/t...

"A sexually transmitted form of ringworm is making a gross splash in the United States. Health officials in Minnesota are warning doctors and the public about an outbreak of the emerging fungus Trichophyton mentagrophytes genotype VII..." via @gizmodo.com www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/13/a...

Men lose their Y chromosomes as they age. "When people who have a Y chromosome lose it, the loss is associated with serious diseases throughout the body, contributing to a shorter lifespan." via @uk.theconversation.com www.realclearscience.com/articles/202...

"Most adults in the United States experience the intense rush of passionate love only about twice throughout their lives, according to a recent large-scale survey." via @psypost.bsky.social www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/13/m...

"Promoting" a creationist? I think you need to read the article...

A creationist astrophysicists argues that UAPs visiting Earth are actually angels. His arguments are nonsense for a very simple reason. www.realclearscience.com/blog/2026/02...

The 6 most important lessons about belly fat (and how to lose it). via @sciencefocus.bsky.social www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/12/s...

"Africa is breaking apart along a giant crack that will form a new ocean between two large masses of land millions of years from now, the latest research shows." via @newsweek.com www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/12/n...

Bears don't actually hibernate. "Unlike hibernation, torpor is involuntary, and primarily triggered by lack of food." via @popsci.com www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/12/b...

"Earth systems may be on the brink of long-term, irreversible destabilization, sending our planet on a “hothouse Earth” trajectory, a scenario in which long-term temperatures remain about 5°C (9°F) higher than preindustrial temperatures..." www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/12/e...

"In a recent issue of the science journal Small, engineers reported that they had “taken a page from Edison’s book” by developing a nickel-iron battery using novel nanotechnology tools." via @gizmodo.com www.realclearscience.com/2026/02/12/s...

My essay for @rcscience.bsky.social, criticizing the National Association of Scholars' attacks on science and calls to require faculty to disclose their test scores, was posted today.
www.realclearscience.com/articles/202...