Why Sleep? Why Dream?

by Robert Lawrence Kuhn

Robert Lawrence Kuhn is the creator, writer and host of "Closer to Truth," a public television series and online resource that features the world's leading thinkers exploring humanity's deepest questions. Kuhn is co-editor, with John Leslie, of "The Mystery of Existence: Why Is There Anything at All?" (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

Your Brain Is a Mosaic of Male and Female

by Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor

There is no such thing as a "male brain" or a "female brain," new research finds.
Instead, men and women's brains are an unpredictable mishmash of male like and female like features, the study concludes. Even in brain regions previously thought to show differences based on sex, variability is more common than consistency.

When a study can’t be replicated

Many factors can prevent scientists from repeating research and confirming results

Shades of 'Star Trek'?

Quantum Teleportation Sets Distance Record

A record-breaking distance has been achieved in the bizarre world of quantum teleportation, scientists say.
The scientists teleported photons (packets of light) across a spool of fiber optics 63 miles (102 kilometers) long, four times farther than the previous record. This research could one day lead to a "quantum Internet" that offers next-generation encryption, the scientists said.

New Math Could Reveal Hidden Sources of Chaos

Mystery Deepens: Matter and Antimatter Are Mirror ImagesNew Math Could Reveal Hidden Sources of Chaos
It's that point when a smooth river turns into a tumultuous swirl of white water, the tornado that unpredictably changes course on a dime or the wild interactions of three planets under one another's gravitational pull.
It's chaos.

Mystery Deepens: Matter and Antimatter Are Mirror Images

Matter and antimatter appear to be perfect mirror images of each other as far as anyone can see, scientists have discovered with unprecedented precision, foiling hope of solving the mystery as to why there is far more matter than antimatter in the universe.

COLLIDING BLACK HOLES MAY DISRUPT THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM IN 100,000 YEARS

COLLIDING BLACK HOLES MAY DISRUPT THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM IN 100,000 YEARS
But it won’t be the end of the world--not ours, anyway

Talk about a fatal attraction. In a galaxy far, far away, two black holes are dancing around each other, drawn together by each others’ immense gravity. Eventually the two may collide, triggering a blast with the power of 100 million star explosions.

Study: Word sounds contain clues for language learners

(PhysOrg.com) -- Why do words sound the way they do? For over a century, it has been a central tenet of linguistic theory that there is a completely arbitrary relationship between how a word sounds and what it means.

Finding iconicity in spoken languages

Have you ever wondered why we call a dog a dog and not a cat? Is this an arbitrary decision, or is it based on iconicity—the resemblance between word structure and meaning? New research shows that for Indo-European languages, like English and Spanish, iconicity is more common than previously believed.