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The science in the back of Your (Irrational) worry of Friday the 13th Today is the second (and last) Friday the 13th of the year. Even though the date is known throughout Western culture as one tainted with evil and negativity, it's really just another Friday on the calendar. There is no difference between today and yesterday, or last Friday, regarding luck. Right? It's 2018, and people are far less superstitious than were people who lived in the Middle Ages, when superstition was commonplace. Well, maybe not, said Kenneth Drinkwater, a parapsychologist at Manchester Metropolitan University in England. "We're actually really superstitious now, if not more so, and yet we think we're not," he said. [13 Common (But Silly) Superstitions] Lacking evidence There is no scientific evidence to suggest this day has an increased chance of bad occurrences compared with other days. But that doesn't mean scientists haven't tried to find any.  In Thomas W. Lawson...

Why Are There nine supreme court Justices? Supreme Court justice Anthony Kenneday said he's retiring at the end of July, meaning the court will hold just eight justices until a new nominee gets confirmed by the U.S. Senate.   Eight justices also manned the court between February 2016 when Justice Antonin Scalia died and Neil Gorsuch was confirmed on April 7, 2017. However, it turns out, the original U.S. Constitution did not set the number of justices on the Supreme Court. Therefore, it was up to Congress to decide, and in 1801, it set the number at five. But things didn't stay that way for long. "The number of Supreme Court justices has changed over the years," Kathy Arberg, spokesperson for the U.S. Supreme Court, told Live Science. "The number of justices has been as high as 10." [8 Supreme Court Decisions that Changed US Families] Congress increased the number to seven in 1807, to nine in 1837, then to 10 in 1863. Then, in order to prevent President Andr...

New Stephen Hawking graphic Biography to reveal the Scientist — and the man The late physicist Stephen Hawking left behind a singular legacy in the world of modern physics and cosmology, and a new graphic biography offers a fresh look at his life — public and private — alongside his achievements in physics. Titled "Hawking," the book is written by Jim Ottaviani and illustrated by Leland Myrick, and today (Sept. 13), Live Science presents an exclusive look at the upcoming release's cover — a strikingly illustrated close-up of Hawking against the backdrop of a distant spiral galaxy — as well as a peek at some of the panels that describe his journey to achieve unparalleled scientific renown. Ottaviani and Myrick previously collaborated on the graphic biography of quantum physicist Richard Feynman ("Feynman," published by First Second in 2011), which was a New York Times best-seller. Their new collaboration, with a release date of July 2, 2019, follows Hawking from ...

Why false ideals Are difficult to Shake Once a belief takes hold, it can be hard to make it budge, even with reams of data and evidence. Now, a new study hints at one reason why: When a person gets just a few jolts of positive feedback for their belief, they feel very certain they're right.   This certainty persists even if the overall body of evidence suggests the person is wrong, researchers reported Aug. 16 in the open-access journal Open Mind. This certainty can be a curiosity killer, said study co-author Louis Marti, a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley.  "If the answers you have happen to be wrong, but you have a very high certainty that you're correct, you're probably not going to go out and seek out other information," Marti told Live Science. False beliefs Marti and his colleagues were interested in how misinformation takes hold, a hot topic in an era when false information spreads rapidly online. In the face of firm evidence, peop...

If you stay positioned during hurricane Florence, Be ready for demanding situations After the hurricane   Many people will likely decide to stay put despite evacuation orders ahead of Hurricane Florence. And if history is any guide, they may not be fully thinking through the problems they'll face in the aftermath. I conducted a research survey in Harris County, Texas, which contains much of metro Houston, after the city was flooded by Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, and found a common thread. Few respondents who stayed in place during the storm planned in advance for coping with extended service interruptions, such as road closures, power and water outages and communications interruptions.   I am a civil engineer and study interactions between people and infrastructure in disasters. In this survey, I wanted to understand how different sub-populations prepare for and adjust to service disruptions during these events. Hurricanes don't always prompt mandatory evacuations, and ev...

Why Creationists Are more likely to buy into Conspiracy Theories When something occurs that's hard to explain, many people say that "everything happens for a reason" and that the event was "meant to be."   The thought provides a purpose for what, in reality, was a random, accidental event. This type of thinking, called teleological thinking, is what gives rise to creationism, which, in this case, refers to the belief that Earth was created by an all-powerful being less than 10,000 years ago. That same kind of reasoning also promotes a belief in conspiracy theories, a new study has found. "I think the study is a valuable and interesting contribution to work on the ways that our gut intuitions can promote particular non-scientific world views," said Deborah Kelemen, a developmental cognitive scientist at Boston University, who was not involved in the study.   In previous research, lead study author Pascal Wagner-Egger, a social psychologist at the Univer...