Issue_29
28 articles-
How Bioprinting Has Turned Frankenstein’s Mad Science Sane
In the United States alone more than 120,000 people are waiting for organ transplants, and many will die before their turns come. What if they didn’t have to wait, because doctors could print out replacement organs on demand?That’s the ultimate goal of bioprinting, a seemingly sci-fi spinoff of the burgeoning industry of 3D printers. If […] -
The Word “Million” Didn’t Exist Until We Needed It
I would cut off my right hand if you find it.” That was the guarantee retired Columbia history lecturer Jens Ulff-Møller made that there was no word for “million” in Old English, a medieval predecessor of the language you’re currently reading. Some Anglo-Saxon writers understood the idea of a million, and they had a term for it: a “thousand […] -
Here’s How to Make Climate Change Extra Scary
Thirty thousand years ago, a woolly mammoth in Siberia shed a giant virus. It soon became encased in ice and, for tens of thousands of years, the virus slept.As global temperatures warm and the permafrost begins to melt, the virus stirs. It is sucked into the nostril of a researcher where it injects its DNA […] -
Why Virtual Classes Can Be Better Than Real Ones
An engineering professor takes online-course critics to school. -
Here’s Why Most Neuroscientists Are Wrong About the Brain
Most neuroscientists believe that the brain learns by rewiring itself—by changing the strength of connections between brain cells, or neurons. But experimental results published last year, from a lab at Lund University in Sweden, hint that we need to change our approach. They suggest the brain learns in a way more analogous to that of […]
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How Many Real Friends Can You Have at Once?
My wife can’t seem to walk for a half-hour around Ottawa, a city with nearly a million people, without running into at least three of her friends. Some people, like my wife, seem to have a zillion of them, while others appear to be content with just a handful. Having more friends seems like a […]
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Why Uber Has To Start Using Self-Driving Cars
In the span of nearly 5 years, Uber has gone from a limited launch in San Francisco to offering rides in more than 300 cities worldwide. In China alone, despite existing in a legal gray zone, the company claims it arranges 1 million rides per day. That means 35 Chinese people hop into an Uber […]
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The World’s Most Inspirational Iceberg Is a Fake
What do the Volkswagen diesel scandal and the European migrant crisis have in common? They’ve both been referred to as the “tip of the iceberg.” The popular expression reflects the fact that, as impressive as the visible portion of an iceberg is, the vast majority of it (usually about 90%) is underwater. Over the past […]
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Why Alien Life Will Be Robotic
If life off Earth exists it has probably transitioned to machine intelligence.
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Will Quantum Mechanics Swallow Relativity?
The contest between gravity and quantum physics takes a new turn.
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How to Build a Search Engine for Mathematics
The surprising power of Neil Sloane’s Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. -
Which Comes First, Big Cities or Big Gods?
Warriors among the Kwara’ae, a collection of tribal communities indigenous to the Solomon Islands, sacrificed pigs before battle. The tradition granted the combatants, so the belief went, aid from heroic ancestral spirits—like the mighty A’orama, a fierce fighter in Kwara’ae folklore. For every man who prepared to shed blood, a hog met its end.1Any non-superstitious […] -
Is Life Special Just Because It’s Rare?
Vitalism in the age of modern science. -
The Galaxy That Got Too Big
From atoms to brains, bigger isn’t always better. -
Why You Didn’t See It Coming
When scale confounds our perceptions, stories can clarify them.
