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.

A black-and-white painting depicts a man with tousled hair, a mustache, and a suit with a tie, facing forward against a textured background.
8mins
What makes some scientists culturally significant, while others remain in obscurity? Well, there’s a science to it.
a woman working on a laptop in a factory.
It is easy to underestimate how much the world can change within a lifetime.
a man in a lab coat holding a test tube
A blood test to diagnose mental illness is a "holy grail" of psychiatry.
a man sitting in front of a laptop computer.
To what extent will our psychological vulnerabilities shape our interactions with emerging technologies?
a black and white photo of an animal skull.
Researchers discovered something modern humans had never before seen—a flashy Neanderthal horn collection.
a star burst in the middle of the night sky.
We are about to learn a lot more about the most elusive of cosmic particles.
a close up of a person with curly hair.
The curlier the hair, the cooler you are.
the sun is setting over the ocean on a cloudy day.
Temperatures in the Sun's core exceed 10 million degrees Celsius. But how on Earth did we actually come to know that?
three test tubes with colored liquids in them.
Not everything that claims to be "scientific" actually is. There are five features of scientifically rigorous studies.
a close up of a bunch of wooden sticks.
A new discovery pushes back the origin of these technologies by about 40,000 years.
inside of xenon
With a bigger, better, and more sensitive detector, the XENON collaboration joins LZ and PANDA-X in constraining WIMP dark matter.
a man sitting on the bow of a sailboat.
Biological age is a better health indicator than the number of years you’ve lived, but it’s tricky to measure.
a drawing of a mountain and a satellite dish.
Theory without experiment is blind, and experiment without theory is lame.
a collage of a woman's face with a colorful background.
1hr 19mins
Steven Pinker explains how to cultivate greater rationality in today's complex world.
photon paths around black hole
What do we mean by a black hole's size? A photon sphere? The minimal stable orbit? The event horizon? The singularity? Which one is right?
runaway supermassive black hole
Speeding through the Universe and leaving a wake of new stars, this runaway supermassive black hole is likely the first among thousands.
WR 124 JWST composite
This beautiful JWST image of Wolf-Rayet star WR 124 has been called a "prelude to a supernova" by NASA. That might be entirely wrong.
two hands reaching towards each other in the dark.
Some would say AI is immortal and all-knowing — Godlike, even.
Steven Spielberg in front of a pterodactyl
AI helped create films like "Jurassic Park" and "A.I.", so Steven Spielberg and other artists shouldn't worry about losing their jobs.