We humans emerged not long ago from evolution's forge as a clever animal adept at hunting and gathering, with intellectual gifts that knew no bounds. Our journey since has taken us to the threshold of nature's deepest mysteries. Who are we, what can we do and where are we headed?

WHO WE ARE

• What Sleep Crime Tells Us About Consciousness
• Aspiration Makes Us Human
• Will We Continue to Get Smarter? The Flynn Effect Says Yes
• Researchers Disagree About How to Extend Human Lifespan

WHAT WE CAN DO

• Coming Soon: Artificial Limbs Controlled by Thoughts
• The Projects that Push the Limits of Engineering
• Searching for Easy Answers to Hard Computational Questions

WHERE WE'RE HEADED

• Experiments Scientists Would Do If They Lived Indefinitely
• How Far Can Climate Change Go?
• Quantum Uncertainty Poses No Obstacles to Nanocomputers

This article was originally published with the title Beyond Limits.

7 Comments

1. 1. Bruce Voigt 12:51 PM 8/30/12

   
   Breaking Past the Limits of Science will not be what you think. Morning news item;
   Astronomers spot multiplanet system with 2 'suns'
   --------------
   Consider earths second sun.
   
   Discovering that all cells at their nucleus have particals so small as not to interact with matter as we know it. That all cells have what has been named fire at the nucleus. That mans interpitation of back, forward, left, right, up and down is exactly that (his interpitation)!
   
   Consider that earths nucleus has its outbound nuclei colliding with incoming nuclei creating whats known as a sun, gravity and atmosphere-- well you can quit your sneering as Admiral Richard Byrd his cojoe and myself have been there!

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2. 2. Bruce Voigt 04:09 PM 8/30/12

   Using my discoveries I explain Bigfoot to be of the likes of UFO, Crop Circle and Ghost where many particles of an entity come together in a packed state. Using your education you come back with yabut, yabut how can that be as big foot leaves foot prints.
   
   I must then explain that forces of equal evolution act upon forces of equal evolution and what gravity really is.

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3. 3. Bruce Voigt 01:34 PM 8/31/12

   A 7.6-magnitude undersea earthquake struck off the eastern coast of the Philippines late today.
   A tsunami alert originally was issued for several countries including the Philippines, Indonesia, Palau, Japan and for Pacific islands as far away as the Northern Marianas, but was eventually lifted, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said.
   --------------------------------
   
   Ideally a Tsunami warning should be executed when a strong earth quake is detected. Problem is that these people do not know what causes an Earthquake or Tsunami and in issuing a warning are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
   
   In most cases, it’s the same thing causing an earthquake that causes a tsunami “except” in these earth tippings it takes moon and ocean exposure to create a tsunami. It’s the reason why you can have a tsunami or rouge wave with out a earthquake and why an earthquake without a tsunami.
   
   The havoc and land movement of whats named Earthquake comes from a tone of sound interacting with the Earths Magnetic field.
   If you have experienced an earthquake and do the following experiment you to will realize that it is the interaction of whats named magnetism and tone of sound that produces the movement of an earthquake.
   
   If you are rich or funded purchase a large crystal bowl and a cow or cattle magnet. This experiment will shock the pants off of you. If your poor like the rest of us find some one in sound therapy and get them to gong their bowl. They will want to show how they can change the tone of sound with their gonger. Having your turn hold the magnet in your fist and make circles in the bowl. As the tone changes there will be a point where raw energy is produced and the magnet will be jumping around in your hand. It is this that causes the movement of an earthquake, Not the scrunching of rock!

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4. 4. jtdwyer 06:04 PM 9/3/12

   The biggest problem is that if fewer of us die of disease & starvation & war & domestic violence and we all live longer, how can this meager planet's resources support 10+ billion humans?

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5. 5. scientific earthling 08:34 PM 9/3/12

   Agree with jtdwyer. Population is our biggest problem and it is destroying our habitat. A consequence of extreme overpopulation is a lack of education for the masses and a growing uneducated population of religious zealots who are extremely confident they have all the answers, mainly in fairy-tales form their ancestors.
   
   Before dreaming of the wonderful things we hope to accomplish, we need to concentrate on how to fix the rapidly denuding biosphere, we need to just stay alive. The US taliban is busy at work conspiring to restore its absolute control over society. Even in non-religious countries like Australia the religious talibans conspire to take over government and regain power. The leader of our Liberal party is a failed priest, extremely religious with a strong hatred of women, while he was health minister he blocked the sale of the morning after pill for women for years by not signing the legislation passed by both houses of parliament. He is a member of the Lyons Forum a taliban organisation of religious politicians.

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6. 6. Mythusmage 09:23 PM 9/3/12

   You don't transcend your knowledge, you transcend your understanding. Johannes Kepler used his expanded knowledge of the Solar System to transcend his understanding for how the Solar System works, and thus changed how we understand the mechanics, and our understanding of the universe.
   
   Our knowledge will continue to expand, and as our knowledge expands our understanding will be transcended.
   
   Prediction: In a century's time the Higgs Boson will be understood as 21st century aether.

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7. 7. tinabrand 06:55 AM 9/23/12

   I haven't read this article yet...I just turned the page to the opening spread showing the equivalent of a message in the bottle <i>entirely</i> from the male perspective. Truth be told, if a life form from another planet came to study us, they might see that we culturally and persistently promote and empower the males of the species more than the females, including to make the male the symbol denoting all humans. But this should puzzle them, as it does me. The female is at least half the key to the evolution and survival of the species.
   Why not make the symbol of the species be one of each sex or an image that is ambiguously either? It would be so refreshing (and scientifically accurate for a change) to see that iconic sequence from early primate to human include the female. It actually does matter in all aspects of life and for all on the continuum of women/girls to men/boys, that icons of humanness do not default to images of the male. In fact, there is much scientific study of how these biases affect individuals and groups, and reporting on that in your pages is too rare.
   Don't get me wrong, I love reading SciAm. But you would do much better to ask with every sentence, ever image, and every choice of topic: how does this appear from the perspective of an extraterrestrial, a woman, or a man. Make no assumptions. Isn't that the first principle of good study? And include more women's perspectives. Isn't that the first principle of profit, laughably ignored by most businesses to the detriment of their bottom line?
   Now I'll turn the page and try to forget that the opening image did not deliver what the title claims: beyond the limits (of narrow mindedness).

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