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Vivek Wadhwa walks us through innovations that will disrupt the manufacturing, communications, finance, healthcare, and energy industries.

What does football really teach us? In “Why Football Matters: My Education in the Game,” author Mark Edmundson recounts his own high school football experience from the perspective of age and asks that very same question in a nuanced, clear-eyed way that might make you think twice about why we love football so much and what that love may be doing to us and our children.

Biographer Walter Isaacson discusses the contributions of both Alan Turing and Ada Lovelace to modern computer philosophy.

Imagine standing in a bare room in which a small, 4-billion-year-old rock hangs from the ceiling by a thin wire as three vocalists whistle and breathe on it to make it swing. For some people, such a scenario might be the nightmare version of contemporary art run amok, so far “out there” that it’s never coming back. 

The possibilities were almost limitless, so why does everything line up? “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless […]

We have developed a world economy that is increasingly dependent on our information and communication technologies, says former NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen. That’s why the crux of our future welfare depends on the development of advanced cybersecurity.

Because intelligence is such a strong genetic trait, rapidly advancing genetics research could result in the ability to create a class of super-intelligent humans one-thousand times higher in IQ than today’s most brilliant thinkers.

Live-streamed from Perimeter Institute, & exclusive real-time commentary! “Every generation of physicists solves some old puzzles and finds some new ones.” –Dr. Kendrick Smith I want you to think back […]

If String Theory has nothing to do with reality, what are our options? “I just think too many nice things have happened in string theory for it to be all […]

What the world’s most powerful collider found, and may yet still find. “Innovation is taking two things that already exist and putting them together in a new way.” –Tom Freston […]

Sure, they wiped out the dinosaurs, but do they really pose a risk to humans? “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind […]

Thousands of families across the United States will trick-or-treat tonight in neighborhoods not their own. The cultural debate surrounding “Halloween carpetbaggers” is tied into broader debates about race, class, and wealth.

Be honest. Nobody’s listening. How happy are you?

The Anthropic Principle is more limited than we like to believe. “There is a voice inside of youThat whispers all day long,‘I feel this is right for me,I know that […]

How would you tell the story of our Universe to an 8-to-10 year old? “To begin, begin.” –William Wordsworth The Big Bang is maybe the greatest scientific achievement of the […]

What is Punk? Punk isn’t about mohawks or studded leather, says Henry Rollins – it’s about resistance to tyranny in any form. How Art Can Change Society, with Sarah Lewis Sarah […]

Too many top minds have “positive capability” bias. That label usefully contrasts with Keats’ “negative capability,” a poetic idea that applies to many unpoetic experts. It explains why Shakespeare’s psychology is better than much of the modern “scientific” sort. 

Christmas may be Jesus’ “birthday,” but, as any mother will tell you, his mother Mary really deserves the applause. Providing the humanity half to join with Christ’s divine side, Mary volunteered to play a part from the Incarnation to the Crucifixion to the Resurrection as everything from an active participant to an interested bystander, depending on your interpretation of Christian scripture. 

“Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.”

A map of Africa displaying Ebola’s limited geographical reach seeks to educate the internet about the ridiculousness of ostracizing people who have recently returned from Sub-Saharan Africa. 

It was fifty years ago that the French philosopher and author Jean-Paul Sartre graciously refused the Nobel Prize for Literature. How different (and more noble?) his world was from ours.

Most of us recognize soma as the ‘ideal pleasure drug’ in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. In this context the pleasure was pacifying—it kept people in line without questioning their […]

Radiation gets stretched to longer and longer wavelengths as space itself expands, but what happens to matter? “The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.” –Molière It’s […]

And if so, how does Einstein’s relativity — both special and general — cope? “If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.” -Mario Andretti The end of the week means another dip […]

Anyone who has seen James Cameron’s 1984 film The Terminator remembers “seeing” through the eyes of the killer android sent into the past as it scans its surroundings for clothes, weapons, and, eventually, its target. German filmmaker Harun Farocki would later call those pictures “operational images”—the machine-made and machine-used pictures of the world that threatened to supplant not just how people see, but people period.   

While 2015 gives us all a fresh start, we can consider the Big Bang until today to be “One Universe Year.” What comes next? “And now we welcome the new […]

Wearable technology is the future, but questions still persist as to where on the body the most popular devices will be worn. According to some prognosticators, temporary tech tattoos will reign supreme.

It’s that time of year again: the moment you can change your life for the better. But promising to ourselves that we’ll do something specific in the future is no […]

How the demons and angels of our greatest minds advanced science. Image credit: Luis Royo Fantasy Art, via Photobucket user mikenolan78. When most people think of Einstein, they think of […]

For destruction, ice is also great, and will suffice. “Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice.From what I’ve tasted of desireI hold with those who favor […]