Science & Tech

Science & Tech

Explore the discoveries that reveal how the world works, alongside the technologies that extend, reshape, and sometimes challenge what’s possible.

The printed Declaration of Independence, beginning with the title “In Congress, July 4, 1776.”
With people’s educations and careers on the line, can we afford to replace human judgment with blind probability?
A human profile silhouette composed of a collage of technological, historical, and scientific objects against a starry night sky.
The debate gets clearer when you split it into three questions.
An visualization of dark matter across the universe
The biggest question most often asked about dark matter is whether it exists. But astrophysically, we've long moved on to the next step.
A Martian Moons eXploration probe with gold-colored insulation and solar panels flies in front of Mars, with the cratered moon Phobos visible in the distance.
JAXA's Martian Moons eXploration mission has just launched. The origin of Phobos and Deimos are at stake, with samples returning home soon.
Four side-by-side panels showing the same area of space with increasing magnification, moving from a wide view of the Milky Way to a detailed infrared image from the Hubble Space Telescope.
The right kind of telescope can get us to our central black hole. But it took something extra to go all the way to seeing its event horizon.
A large radio telescope dish surrounded by forested hills and several supporting towers beneath a cloudy sky, searching for signals from a distant starless gas cloud.
While we now actively listen for aliens, we've never made an intentional long-term broadcast ourselves. What signal should we ideally send?
einstein general relativity curved spacetime
General relativity is incredibly difficult, both physically and mathematically. But all theorists need to learn it. Here's how to grok it.
unstable equilibrium
In physics, things shouldn't need fine-tuning in order to match reality. Is naturalness a good guide toward an underlying explanation?
Visualization of the timeline of the universe, from the beginning big bang to the present.
The Hubble "constant" isn't actually constant, evolving over both time and space. Will it ever become constant? That depends on dark energy.
kalam cosmological argument
Compared to the scale of the cosmos, a single human body might seem insignificant. But there's an entire Universe within each of us, too.
Two small, boxy satellites joined by an artificial gravity cable in orbit above Earth.
A huge obstacle for human bodies in space is that we fare poorly in zero/reduced gravity. Can two rotating, tethered capsules overcome that?
A smiling woman with shoulder-length gray hair wearing a blazer.
6mins
Everyone wants to know if AI will replace their job. Jennifer Doudna, co-inventor of CRISPR, has a clear-eyed take from inside the lab.
hottest planet
Despite being the innermost and most absorptive planet, Mercury "only" reaches 800 °F at its hottest. Venus is always hotter, even at night.
A man in a black t-shirt and jeans sits on a chair in front of a white backdrop, framed by a digital background of microscopic viral structures and binary code.
1hr 24mins
Blaise Agüera y Arcas argues that function defines life more than material does, and that AI belongs in the same story.
An older man in a suit jacket and striped shirt wearing glasses, gesturing with his hand while speaking about IceCube neutrinos.
Back in 1988, Francis Halzen had what he called a "cute idea." His vision grew into the IceCube observatory, and earns the 2026 Nobel Prize.
Close-up of a rough rock surface with brown and green mineral fragments scattered and embedded within darker matrix material.
Strong, durable Martian concrete needs a mix of small-grained Martian sand and pure sulfur. NASA found the ingredients are already there.
A steaming, rocky geothermal crater with mineral deposits, surrounded by barren, yellowish terrain under a cloudy sky.
It has some researchers taking a second look at other hypotheses that have been proposed — and mostly discarded — in the past. 
olympus mons
From base to tip, Mars's Olympus Mons is the highest known mountain in the Solar System. Evidence suggests a higher one could be out there.
black hole
From Hawking radiation, even black holes are expected to eventually decay. Do they ever reach a point where we'll see what's inside of them?
entanglement across space
Are quantum fields real, or a mere calculational tool? 3 unique experiments show they carry energy. If energy's real, so are quantum fields.