Marcelo Gleiser

I finally watched the movie Her, directed and written by Spike Jonze (aka Adam Spiegel). The screenplay deservedly got an Oscar earlier this year. The movie explores the human-machine interface, exposing our emotional fragility in a deeply moving and lyrical story. Rarely have the loneliness of modern life and ...

With Mother's Day just in the rearview mirror and Father's Day just around the corner, I can think of nothing more appropriate than spending a few moments connecting our lives with our collective progenitors.

As with our flesh-and-blood parents, we wouldn't be here without them. This is no la-la-land-new-agey thing; ...

Let's face it, the evidence is hard on the case for life elsewhere in the universe. This, of course, doesn't mean that there is no life on another world. We couldn't ever make a statement like that. Science is better at finding things than at ruling things out. Or, as ...

Opening Disclaimer 1: Although there may be more than one universe, as per the hypothetical multiverse, we will humbly submit to our own bubble of information, the sphere with a radius equal to the distance light has traveled since the beginning of time some 13.8 billion years ago. Factoring ...

Is physics in crisis? An article in the May issue of Scientific American by physicists Joseph Lykken, from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and Maria Spiropulu, from the California Institute of Technology, lay bare an issue that is keeping a growing number of physicists up at night. Will ...

Today I pay tribute to my mentors. You know, those rare people in life who take the time to help you, quite often redefining the path ahead. Mentors are people who selflessly give away two of their most precious commodities: wisdom and time.

Who hasn't been confused, unsure of which ...

In the past two weeks, I explored here some of the consequences of the remarkable observation by the scientists of the BICEP2 experiment in the South Pole. The data, potentially revolutionary, points to a period of extremely fast cosmic expansion at the very beginning of time, a signal ...

Let's take a walk on the wild side and assume, for the sake of argument, that our universe is not the only one; let's say there are many others, possibly infinitely many, "out there." The totality of this bizarre ensemble is what cosmologists call the "multiverse," a hypothesis that sounds ...

Nine days ago, the unbelievable became believable as an enthralled scientific community heard the announcement of an amazing experimental result: For the first time, astronomers detected signals from events dating back to the origin of the universe. Scientists heard the first echoes of creation.

Our own Adam Frank wrote ...

As we found out on Monday, the universe appears to be filled with the rippling remains of an early period of ultrafast expansion, a discovery that ushers a new era of observations that will take us right up to the beginning of time. (Also: read Adam's post.)

The ...

If philosophy's main goal is to figure out what makes life worth living, it is also, by extension, a preparation for dying. Plato knew this and took it to heart. And now we can listen to him again, and learn something useful. The man who gave us philosophy as we ...

It's Ash Wednesday, and while we freeze up here in New England, the people of Brazil are picking up the mess after four days of rampage and decadent partying during their legendary Carnival celebrations. But even if Carnival's reputation is due to the wild dancing, singing and flirting, it ...

The possibility that machines will be able to simulate the human brain is all over the news these days. In the United States, President Obama's Brain Initiative promises $100 million to fund research into "how we think, learn, and remember." In Europe, the Blue Brain Project, headed by ...

In last week's New Yorker, essayist and critic Adam Gopnik reviewed Peter Watson's The Age of Atheists: How We Have Sought to Live Since the Death of God, a book that — starting with Nietzsche's pronouncement that God is dead — visits most of the famous atheists of ...

What should we be worried about? Real Scenarios that keep scientists up at night. This is the title of the new book edited by the literary agent John Brockman, founder of the website Edge.org, a discussion forum that includes novelist Ian McEwan, musician Brian Eno, physicists Frank Wilczek ...

Black holes are in crisis. Well, not them, but the people who think about them, theoretical physicists who try to understand the relationship between the two pillars of modern physics, general relativity and quantum physics. Judging from the current discussions, one of the two must go, at least in their ...

Last week, something amazing happened: after hibernating for 31 months while cruising through space hundreds of millions of miles from Earth, the European Space Agency probe Rosetta woke up from its slumber and sent a message home: "Hello, world!" Rosetta is up and running now that it's nearer ...

Last week I wrote about free will, or whether we are the agents of our own decisions. My thoughts were prompted by an invitation to participate in a roundtable discussion about the issue with colleagues from different fields, from cognitive neuroscience to philosophy, organized by the Foundational Questions ...

Everyone wants to be free; or at least have some choice in life. We all have our professional, family and social commitments. On the other hand, most people believe that they are free to choose what to do, from the simplest to the more complex: should I drink coffee with ...

In a society where success is pursued and celebrated above everything else, where media stars, sport champions and the very rich are idolized, failure is seen as an embarrassment, something we must avoid at all costs and, when we can't, must be hidden from everyone else.

Maybe it shouldn't be ...