All Articles
How Einstein Lost His Bearings, and With Them, General Relativity
By 1913, Albert Einstein had nearly completed general relativity. But a simple mistake set him on a tortured, two-year reconsideration of his theory. Today, mathematicians still grapple with the issues he confronted.
Why Doing Good Makes It Easier to Be Bad
Oscar Wilde wouldn’t have been surprised to hear of a series of recent scandals in the U.K.
Scary AI Is More “Fantasia” Than “Terminator”
Ex-Googler Nate Soares on AI’s alignment problem.
Al Gore Does His Best Ralph Waldo Emerson
The former vice president reads the transcendentalist poet—and reminds us of one.
The Point of Men’s Cults
Does their pervasiveness tell us something important about evolution and human behavior?
It’s Time to Make Human-Chimp Hybrids
The humanzee is both scientifically possible and morally defensible.
New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life
A newfound pair of giant viruses have massive genomes and the most complete resources for building proteins ever seen in the viral world. They have refreshed the debate about the origins of these parasites.
