Looking at today’s discussions about the scarcity of resources, climate change, or economic growth, a recurrent pattern of argumentation reveals itself: “Today’s social and economic system requires constant growth. And in a finite world that’s just not possible.” The intellectual great-grandfather of this position was the British economist Thomas Robert Malthus, who in 1798 (in […]

Canaries used to play an important role in mining. When the dangerous but odorless gas carbon monoxide got released in the underground, canaries were affected fastest. Already at a concentration of 0.3% and after a time of about two and a half minutes the birds fell of their pole dead. The miners were thus warned […]

The mechanisms of popular attention and outrage are not always easy to comprehend. Hardly incomprehensible is, however, that the business practice of the firm Cambridge Analytica provoke strong public reactions. The commentaries in print and online media are rarely as unanimous as in this case: Basic rules of democracy have been violated. Less understandable is […]

The physicist community mourns the death of Stephen Hawking, one of its greatest minds. A life that began in the midst of the deepest crisis of the 20th century and is unlikely to be surpassed in intellectual heights and at the same time physical suffering has come to an end. Stephen Hawking was the pop […]

The grand coalition will come to reality in Germany. We will see the (re-)instatement of a government that has a good chance of being more successful than its reputation suggests. Thus the usual fighting for political offices, which always precedes the formation of a new government, finds its end. Ministerial positions are all too often […]

A remarkable paradox shapes our time: The technological progress enables us to live in unprecedented safety, enjoy the highest ever levels of health, and experience a quality of life no past generation has ever known. At the same time many people project a future in which everything we know is destroyed or even humanity as […]

Every year, the amount of data we humans produce doubles. That means, in 2018 alone as many giga-, tera-, peta- and exabytes will come together worldwide as in the whole of human history until 2017. The background of this growth is that data, its collection and transfer are no longer bound to static computers. Smart […]

In 1981 the famous theoretical physicist Richard Feynman gave a widely praised speech in which he developed a thought that has kept physicists and engineers up on their feet until today. He designed the vision of an entirely new kind of computer that would make today’s high-powered computers look like a Commodore 64 from the […]

In 1983 a single topic triggered the most intense discussion across the West German society: the scheduled population census. Every household in the country was supposed to fill out a questionnaire with 36 questions on the housing situation, the people living in the household, and their personal income. Hundreds of citizens’ initiatives throughout the country […]