Everyone has, at one time or another, experienced how dreams can influence our moods and actions. However, putting an idea in somebody else’s head while they are dreaming in order to make them do something specific once they wake up is still the stuff of science fiction. In the 2010 movie “Inception,” Leonardo di Caprio’s character tries to get the heir of a wealthy businessman to break up his father’s empire. To do so, he shares a dream with the heir, in which through clever manipulation, the heir’s convictions about his father are subtly altered, leading him to abandon his late father’s business.

While sharing dreams and planting s...

Scientists aren’t entirely sure how life began on Earth, but one prevailing theory posits that persistent cycles of wet and dry conditions on land helped assemble the complex chemical building blocks necessary for microbial life. This is why a patchwork of well-preserved ancient mud cracks found by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is so exciting to the mission’s team.

A new paper in Nature details how the distinctive hexagonal pattern of these mud cracks offers the first evidence of wet-d...

We often believe computers are more efficient than humans. After all, computers can complete a complex math equation in a moment and can also recall the name of that one actor we keep forgetting. However, human brains can process complicated layers of information quickly, accurately, and with almost no energy input: recognizing a face after only seeing it once or instantly knowing the difference between a mountain and the ocean. These simple human tasks require enormous processing and energy input from computers, and even then, with varying degrees of accuracy.

Creating brain-like computers with minimal energy requireme...

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has followed up on observations by the Hubble Space Telescope of the farthest star ever detected in the very distant universe, within the first billion years after the big bang...