Daniel Rourke /stream

Bookmark

Taxidermy (and the chemistry of the morgue) has been something close to a cult obsession with our contemporary gang. We get it, we get it, you often want to howl in…

Bookmark

Our fascination with ants has led to engaging stories about them, from the Iliad’s Myrmidons to Antz’s Z, as well as a growing body of research by biologists. Though the ant…

Bookmark

This year saw the invasion of telepresence robots—electromechanical avatars that allow you to be there without actually being there. Today, half a dozen companies are selling, or will start selling, these…

Bookmark

What bad writing has to do with war casualties and traffic over North America. It’s no secret we have a data visualization fetish, but that’s not just because we like looking…

Bookmark

What do scientists think about seeing their fields of research pulverized by science fiction? We asked researchers from diverse fields to tell us whether any science fiction gets it right. Several…

Bookmark

Good sense is the most fairly distributed commodity in the world, Descartes once quipped, because nobody thinks he needs any more of it than he already has. A neat illustration of…

Bookmark

In this in-depth analysis, Daniel Johnson discusses games, language and sociology with regard to Valve's Portal - please note that the article contains story spoilers for the game. In 1959 Erving…

Bookmark

Carl Honoré (In Praise of Slow) says Canada's Baffin Island Inuit "use the same word—'uvatiarru'—to mean both 'in the distant past' and 'in the distant future.' Time, in such cultures, is…

Bookmark

Over the next 10 years, scientific experts will be dealing with "extreme weather." No one knows how weird and dangerous it will get. Moscow already faces Bahrain-like temperatures. Downpours swamp a…

Bookmark

Is our species, Homo sapiens sapiens, the first cyborg species? Gizmodo/New Scientist has a fascinating article up about how humans evolved as a result of technology. Timothy Taylor, an anthropologist and…

Bookmark

Are signs and meanings just as vital to living things as enzymes and tissues? Liz Else investigates a science in the making EVERY so often, something shows up on the New…

Bookmark

You may have heard of determinism, the theory that absolutely everything that happens is causally determined to happen exactly as it does by what has already gone before — right back…

Bookmark

Let's get one thing straight: Agnosticism is not some kind of weak-tea atheism. Agnosticism is not atheism or theism. It is radical skepticism, doubt in the possibility of certainty, opposition to…

Bookmark

There’s a struggle inside the brain of David Eagleman for the soul of David Eagleman. That is, there might be such a struggle if Eagleman’s brain believed that Eagleman had a…

Bookmark

It may sound like the plot of a Dan Brown novel, but an academic at the University of Manchester claims to have cracked a mathematical and musical code in the works…

Bookmark

The structure of the film is that of a heist movie, but if the film were to be slotted into a genre, that genre would have to be science fiction. Personally,…

Bookmark

Who Goes There? is a science fiction novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. under the pen name Don A. Stuart, published August 1938 in Astounding Stories. In 1973, the story was…

Bookmark

This Web-only article is a special rich-media presentation of the feature, "12 Events That Will Change Everything," which appears in the June 2010 issue of Scientific American. The presentation was created…

Bookmark

A science historian at The University of Manchester has cracked "The Plato Code" - the long disputed secret messages hidden in the great philosopher's writings. Plato was the Einstein of Greece's…

Bookmark

Taxidermy (and the chemistry of the morgue) has been something close to a cult obsession with our contemporary gang. We get it, we get it, you often want to howl in…

Bookmark

Our fascination with ants has led to engaging stories about them, from the Iliad’s Myrmidons to Antz’s Z, as well as a growing body of research by biologists. Though the ant…

Bookmark

That headline flashed to all corners of the media universe this month. Of course, we don't know whether a universe has corners. Truth is, we don't know much about the universe…

Bookmark

What bad writing has to do with war casualties and traffic over North America. It’s no secret we have a data visualization fetish, but that’s not just because we like looking…

Bookmark

Good sense is the most fairly distributed commodity in the world, Descartes once quipped, because nobody thinks he needs any more of it than he already has. A neat illustration of…

Bookmark

We paired up Britain's most celebrated scientists to chat about the big issues: the unity of life, ethics, energy, Handel – and the joy of riding a snowmobile Sir David Attenborough,…

Bookmark

Carl Honoré (In Praise of Slow) says Canada's Baffin Island Inuit "use the same word—'uvatiarru'—to mean both 'in the distant past' and 'in the distant future.' Time, in such cultures, is…

Bookmark

Over the next 10 years, scientific experts will be dealing with "extreme weather." No one knows how weird and dangerous it will get. Moscow already faces Bahrain-like temperatures. Downpours swamp a…

Bookmark

Is our species, Homo sapiens sapiens, the first cyborg species? Gizmodo/New Scientist has a fascinating article up about how humans evolved as a result of technology. Timothy Taylor, an anthropologist and…

Bookmark

Now available for free online: The Mind's I: Fantasies and reflections on self and soul (ISBN 0-553-34584-2) is a 1981 book composed and arranged by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C.…

Bookmark

You may have heard of determinism, the theory that absolutely everything that happens is causally determined to happen exactly as it does by what has already gone before — right back…

Bookmark

A starry firmament, or sand cascading through one’s open fingers, or weeds springing up time after time: the first conception of infinity, of the uncountable and the unending, is not recorded,…

Bookmark

There’s a struggle inside the brain of David Eagleman for the soul of David Eagleman. That is, there might be such a struggle if Eagleman’s brain believed that Eagleman had a…

Bookmark

It may sound like the plot of a Dan Brown novel, but an academic at the University of Manchester claims to have cracked a mathematical and musical code in the works…

Bookmark

The structure of the film is that of a heist movie, but if the film were to be slotted into a genre, that genre would have to be science fiction. Personally,…

Bookmark

This Web-only article is a special rich-media presentation of the feature, "12 Events That Will Change Everything," which appears in the June 2010 issue of Scientific American. The presentation was created…

Bookmark

A science historian at The University of Manchester has cracked "The Plato Code" - the long disputed secret messages hidden in the great philosopher's writings. Plato was the Einstein of Greece's…

Bookmark

In the past, daydreaming was often considered a failure of mental discipline, or worse. Freud labeled it infantile and neurotic. Psychology textbooks warned it could lead to psychosis. Neuroscientists complained that…