To find out what would happen if the brain was cut off from all external stimuli, scientist John Lilly built the first sensory deprivation tank in 1954. Floating in warm water for hours in complete ...

Sarah Vitak: This is Scientific American’s 60 Second Science. I’m Sarah Vitak. The question of how life came to be has captivated humans for millennia. The prevailing theory now is that, on a highly ...

No one can question the impact of science on human civilization, and the importance of experimentation in science is equally undeniable. Some experiments confirm what we already know, others suggest a ...

MIT physicists have performed an idealized version of one of the most famous experiments in quantum physics. Their findings demonstrate, with atomic-level precision, the dual yet evasive nature of ...

An experiment seven years in the making has uncovered new insights into the nature of consciousness and challenges two prominent, competing scientific theories: Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and ...

I STARTED collecting examples of bizarre experiments years ago while in graduate school studying the history of science. I confess I had no profound intellectual motive; I simply found them ...

The transformation unleashed by increased funding for science during the 20th century is nothing short of remarkable. In the early 1900s research was a cottage industry mostly funded by private firms ...

Have you ever imagined the solution to a logic problem instead of calculating it? Such “thought experiments” are carried out using one’s imagination rather than doing actual research. Typically ...