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 Copernican-inspired map of the world showcasing a central globe.
Despite the vast number of planets in the Universe, Earth's specific evolutionary history guarantees that its life forms — including humans — are utterly unique.
A painting of a man with a turban and a map.
The history of cartography might have been very different if the Latin version of Muhammad al-Idrisi's atlas had survived instead of the Arabic one.
The book cover 'the down and out universe' explores biocentrism on an orange background.
We are not the center of the Universe, but life is.
I polled today.
Predictive power has perverse, anti-democratic consequences. So be a good citizen and lie to election pollsters.
color charge color anticolor
When what we predict and what we measure don't add up, that's a sign there's something new to learn. Could it be a new fundamental force?
A picture of a roller coaster with broken metal structures against the backdrop of the sky.
Time to rewrite our understanding of structural engineering.
Oppenheimer on the left and Heisenberg on the right.
As the Manhattan Project headed for completion, German attempts to build a nuclear weapon had already been dismantled.
Edwin Hubble and Andromeda galaxy
The first observational evidence showing the Universe is expanding is 100 years old now: in 2023. Here's the story of its 100th anniversary.
NGC 5584 cepheid hubble
How fast is the Universe expanding? Two major methods disagree. New JWST data, just released, strengthens this Hubble tension even further.
A termite mound
Smarter building materials can control indoor temperatures without external power.
An artist's rendering of a spacecraft near an asteroid.
Whether you call it 10 quintillion, 10 million trillion, or 10 billion billion, it's a 1 followed by 19 zeroes.
A comparison of two rice plants focusing on their immunity.
The technology could yield "made-to-order resistance genes" to protect crops against pathogens and pests.
A tooth and a piece of wood juxtaposed in an unsettling manner.
A 1.5-million-year-old hominin bone shows signs that the victim was eaten by lions — and humans.
standard model structure
Some constants, like the speed of light, exist with no underlying explanation. How many "fundamental constants" does our Universe require?
A woman poses in front of the letter x in a black and white photo.
The use of the letter x as an unknown is a relatively modern convention.
A man exploring quantum computing in a room with red lights.
Nature may not allow us full access to the weirdness of quantum mechanics.
A person making medical breakthroughs by looking through a microscope.
Ethicist and doctor Simon Whitney argues that society's overly cautious approach to medical research is blocking breakthroughs.
Raisin bread expanding Universe
Two fundamentally different ways of measuring the expanding Universe disagree. What's the root cause of this Hubble tension?
A group of silver balls resembling mercury surrounding a statue of a man influenced by Maya culture.
Today, many Maya sites are polluted with toxic levels of mercury. The contamination likely originated from cinnabar paints and art.