Articles by Phys Org

The iconic sound of an orchestra tuning is highly recognizable, even for those who’ve never set foot in a concert hall. Many of us first heard it while watching a Looney Tunes cartoon.This article is […]

This week, researchers hypothesized that human culture is distinguished from cultures of other species like whales by unique open-endedness—the ability to communicate and understand an infinite number of possibilities. An ancient unicellular organism provided evidence […]

The largest and longest-lasting society formed by people who escaped slavery and their descendants endured for a century in northeastern Brazil, and it continues to be a potent political symbol of Black pride today. University […]

A new study highlights key challenges and tensions in research ethics, particularly in light of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, and calls for the adoption of new research ethics policies.This article is brought to […]

This week, researchers reported the world’s second-tiniest toad, winning the silver in the Brachycephalus contest. Chemists at UCLA disproved a 100-year-old organic chemistry rule. And researchers in Kenya report that elephants don’t like bees, which […]

I’m standing in a basement kitchen prodding at a sheep’s liver, looking for marks on its smooth surface. People crowd around to film the proceedings, since I’m here to ask a question that everyone wants […]

Throughout accounts of 17th-century witch trials in Europe and North America, physical features alone were considered undeniable proof of witchcraft. The belief was that the devil branded witches’ bodies with symbolic, material marks—such as unusual […]

What keeps you up at night? Bank account woes? An impending work presentation? Analyzing that embarrassing thing you said in the seventh grade?This article is brought to you by Phys.Org.

Medieval people have a reputation for being superstitious—and many of the supernatural phenomena found in the pages of medieval chronicles, miracle stories and romances are still alive in modern culture. Think ghosts, werewolves, demons, vampires, […]

This time of year, I often run across articles proclaiming Halloween a modern form of the pagan Irish holiday of Samhain—pronounced SAW-en. But as a historian of Ireland and its medieval literature, I can tell […]