Nova next

There are hundreds, thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of people around the world who have gone through their own version of hell—some of them resilient, some not. But in this room of psychologists and neuroscientists, Lindhout was a warm-blooded reminder why the work they do matters.

On a small hill in the heart of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 170 tons of glass, imprinted with history, sit in a dimly lit corner. Each rectangular plate is about the size of a sheet of paper and, with the exception of black ink spots, the collection is surprisingly clear, especially when you consider that some date…

Almost every day, the news contains another story of sexual assault. Those stories that make the news are likely only a small fraction of those assaults reported, and only a minority of victims ever makes a formal complaint to police.

Only 40% of Americans attribute global warming to human activity, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll. This, despite decades of scientific evidence and the fact that Americans generally trust climate scientists.

It’s a cycle nearly as old as human history. Plow, plant, harvest, and repeat. It worked for our ancestors, and it’s working for us now, though with ever more problems, from obliterating soil nutrients to encouraging erosion. And things may get worse in the future, too, when climate change threatens—whether through drowning or drought—to topple…

The idea was too beautiful to be wrong. That you could start with nothing, apply some basic laws of physics, and get auniverse out of it—a universe that was uniform on the largest scales but replete with the lumps and bumps we call stars and galaxies, a universe, that is, that looks like ours—well, it…