CATEGORIES

Building a Sixth-Generation Bomber Raptor

THE GLOBAL COMBAT AIR Programme (GCAP)-a project by the U.K., Italy, and Japan to develop a sixth-generation stealth fighter-has been busy at the drawing board reshaping its vision of the future of air warfare. And judging by the new concept model unveiled at this year's Farnborough air show, that future has big triangular wings.

Fresh Fingerprints on an Ancient Statue

A CLAY FIGURINE HAS SPENT MILLENNIA incomplete, waiting at the bottom of a lake for its long-dead craftsman to finish the Iron Age-era statuette.

ONE OF THE 'GREATEST THREATS' TO THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST ISN'T WHAT YOU THINK.

EXPERTS ARE PREPARING THE REGION AGAINST THE THREAT OF DANGEROUS VOLCANIC MUDFLOWS, KNOWN AS LAHARS, WHICH COULD INUNDATE THE COMMUNITIES SURROUNDING MT. RAINIER IN AS LITTLE AS 30 MINUTES.

This Ancient Fossil With a Brain and Guts

WE KNOW WHAT FOSSILS LOOK like. For example, typical dinosaur fossils are bones turned to stone and preserved from the passage of time, located, if we're particularly lucky, in large collections that can be reassembled to represent the beast they used to prop up in their entirety.

The Electroweak Force of the Early Universe

TODAY, THE UNIVERSE AS WE KNOW IT IS governed by four fundamental forces: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity.

The Tools of Copernicus

WAY BACK IN 1508, WITH ONLY LIMited tools at his disposal, Nicolaus Copernicus developed a celestial model of a heliocentric planetary system, which he described in hist landmark work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. It was a complete overhaul of our conception of the universe-one that, unfortunately, earned him the ire of the Catholic church for decades after his death-and forever changed the way we look at the stars.

A Cuneiform Shopping List

MOST OF US CAN DO ALL OF OUR shopping with the click of a few buttons, and while that's certainly convenient, it can make it difficult to keep track of when exactly that new armoire or bookshelf will show up at your doorstep.

SNOWBALL EARTH

IMAGINE A PLANET WHERE THE AVERAGE temperature is a delightful -58° Fahrenheit every day. Not a place you'd want to visit, right? Lucky for you, then, that you weren't around several hundred million years ago, because these brutal conditions were the unfortunate reality of the \"Snowball Earth.\"

Quantum Entanglement in Our Brains

IT HAS LONG BEEN ARGUED THAT THE human brain is similar to a computer. But in reality, that's selling the brain pretty short.

Are We on the Verge of an ARMS RACE in SPACE?

RUMORS OF A RUSSIAN SPACE NUKE, ALONG WITH OTHER SATELLITE-TARGETING WEAPONS, HAVE MADE GEOPOLITICAL TENSIONS EXTEND INTO ORBIT.

HOW TO DIY OFF-GRID SOLAR

SPEND THE TIME UP FRONT AND PLAN IT CAREFULLY TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT

THE WORLD'S TOUGHEST ROW

They rowed 3,000 miles across the Atlantic, battling unpredictable weather, chaotic seas, and finicky equipment. But what they discovered gave them profound new insights into the power of the ocean.

THE INSIDE SCOOP ON DESSERT TECH

A lab in Denmark works to make the perfect ice cream. Bring on the fava beans?

CONFESSIONS OF A HINGE POWER DATER

BY HIS OWN estimation, JB averages about three dates a week. \"It's gonna sound wild,\" he confesses, \"but I've probably been on close to 200 dates in the last year and a half.\"

REVENGE OF THE SOFTIES

FOR YEARS, PEOPLE COUNTED MICROSOFT OUT. THEN SATYA NADELLA TOOK CONTROL. AS THE COMPANY TURNS 50, IT'S MORE RELEVANT-AND SCARIER-THAN EVER.

MOVE SLOWLY AND BUILD THINGS

EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON MICROCHIPS-WHICH MEANS TOO MUCH DEPENDS ON TAIWAN. TO REBUILD CHIP MANUFACTURING AT HOME, THE U.S. IS BETTING BIG ON AN AGING TECH GIANT. BUT AS MONEY AND COLOSSAL INFRASTRUCTURE FLOW INTO OHIO, DOES TOO MUCH DEPEND ON INTEL?

FOLLOW THAT CAR

CHASING A ROBOTAXI FOR HOURS AND HOURS IS WEIRD AND REVELATORY, AND BORING, AND JEALOUSY-INDUCING. BUT THE DRIVERLESS WORLD IS COMING FOR ALL OF US. SO GET IN AND BUCKLE UP.

THE NEW COLD WARRIOR

CHINA IS RACING TO UNSEAT THE UNITED STATES AS THE WORLD'S TECHNOLOGICAL SUPERPOWER

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'

KINDRED MOTORWORKS VW BUS - Despite being German, the VW T1 Microbus is as Californian as the Grateful Dead.

COPYCATS (AND DOGS)

Nine years ago, a pair of freshly weaned British longhair kittens boarded a private plane in Virginia and flew to their new home in Europe.

STAR POWER

The spirit of Silicon Valley lives onat this nuclear fusion facility's insane, top-secret opening ceremony.

THE WATCHFUL INTELLIGENCE OF TIM COOK

APPLE INTELLIGENCE IS NOT A PLAY ON \"AI,\" THE CEO INSISTS. BUT IT IS HIS PLAY FOR RELEVANCE IN ALL AREAS, FROM EMAIL AUTO-COMPLETES TO APPS THAT SAVE LIVES.

The Most Remote Place in the World - Point Nemo is Earth's official "middle of nowhere." A lot seems to be going on there.

It’s called the “longest-swim problem”: If you had to drop someone at the place in the ocean farthest from any speck of land—the remotest spot on Earth—where would that place be? The answer, proposed only a few decades ago, is a location in the South Pacific with the coordinates 48 52.5291ᤩS 123 23.5116ᤩW: the “oceanic point of inaccessibility,” to use the formal name. It doesn’t get many visitors. But one morning last year, I met several people who had just come from there.

The Hunt for Life on a Moon of Jupiter Begins - Nearly half a billion miles from Earth, a world may be stirring.

Europa has fascinated astronomers and exobiologists at least since 1979, when the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft reconnoitered the moon and photographed an icy white surface shot through with cracks and fractures, suggesting a churning ocean disrupting the frozen crust. The later Galileo mission, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003, discovered that Jupiter's magnetic field is disrupted in the vicinity of Europa in a way consistent with a deep, electrically conductive liquid beneath the surface of the moon. The Juno mission, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, has been studying Europa more closely still, documenting ice walls, scarps, and ridges, all pointing to a surface in constant motion. Astronomers now believe that Europa has an ice shell up to 15 miles thick, covering a global ocean up to 100 miles deep.

Inside the Uncanny World of TikTok Home Remodeling - Turn a tree into a luxury apartment. Retrofit a bedroom for a million children. The videos are bizarre-and going very viral. Who's behind them?

If you've been on TikTok at any point in the past six months, chances are you've stumbled across them, as I first did during a fairly routine doomscroll one night this summer. For me it started with two videos somewhat incongruously tagged #homeremodeling and #housedesign. One of them featured a CGI man summoning a baby phoenix outside of a tree that he planned to turn into an apartment. Then a robotic AI voice started to narrate how the CGI man, identified as Little John, was going to build it. Over the next 90 seconds, Little John transformed the tree into a maniacally space-efficient luxury unit in an AI-generated ballet of flying galvanized square steel, ecofriendly wood veneer, and expansion screws.

A Full-Term Gig - Hiring someone to carry your baby to term is a booming business.

Hiring someone to carry your baby to term is a booming business. The market for surrogacy is expected to expand to $129 billion by 2032, fueled by older parents, rising infertility, and more same-sex families. Silicon Valley contributes to the growth too: Tech companies like Google, Meta, and Snap pitch in up to $80,000 toward the six-figure cost of the process.

THE MIDLIFE NOT -A-CRISIS OF MARK CUBAN

Though he's soon to be out at Shark Tank, the billionaire has a massive new \"disruption\" in the works. He's certain it'll save lives.

THE ALTERNATE UNIVERSE OF MEREDITH WHITAKER

It's free. It doesn't track you or serve you ads. It pays its engineers very well. And it's a go-to app for hundreds of millions of people.

THE DAD-ROCK DIPLOMACY OF ANTONY BLINKEN

Two major wars. A rising China. Hackers everywhere. He's from the US government, and he's here to help.

THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEXES TRAE STEPHENS

The venture capitalist and cofounder of the defense-tech startup Anduril has worked with Donald Trump, Peter Thiel, Palmer Luckey, and Elon Musk.