Welcome to "The End," at least as we know it. The features here, from the September 2010 issue, cover a range of topics, such as the decomposition of human flesh, the disappearance of cultures, the Earth's remaining natural resources, and apocalypse scenarios.

You will also find links to our exclusive digital offerings as they go live, including an interactive, rich-media feature, as well as links to interviews about the issue on public radio's The Takeaway. Tell us what you think using the comments section below.

Feature Articles from the September 2010 Issue

Start of the End Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina explains the September 2010 issue of Scientific American	Eternal Fascinations with the End Why we're suckers for stories of our own demise
Why Can't We Live Forever As we grow old, our own cells begin to betray us. By unraveling the mysteries of aging, scientists may be able to make our lives longer and healthier	When Does Life Belong To the Living? Some doctors think we shouldn’t wait for donors to die before removing their organs.
Dust to Dust The brief, eventful afterlife of a human corpse	Last of Their Kind The world's cultures have been disappearing, taking valuable knowledge with them, but there is reason to hope
Good Riddance Our highly selective list includes Teflon, dropped calls and the space shuttle	How Much Is Left? A graphical accounting of the limits to what one planet can provide
Laying Odds on the Apocalypse Could modern civilization really come to an end? Experts take stock of eight doomsday scenarios	Could Time End? Yes. And no. For time to end seems both impossible and inevitable. Recent work in physics suggests a resolution to the paradox
What Comes Next The flip side to every ending is a new beginning. We asked the visionary scientists on our advisory board what new trends will shape the decades to come

Online Exclusives

Good Riddance to Polio: A Conquered Disease Still Clings to Life Despite a known preventative, polio still maims and cripples 1,000 people annually	Good Riddance to Mosquitoes: Four Ways to Beat the Malaria-Carrying Threat Lasers, parasites and other methods could help prevent a disease that afflicts hundreds of millions of people
Good Riddance to the Population Explosion: Keys to Prevent Unsustainable Growth The nine billion people expected by 2050 will stress the planet, but cost-effective means can prevent overpopulation	Good Riddance to Overfishing: New Management Can End Unsustainable Practices Trade bans may fail, but fishing management agencies have other strategies, too, including those proved to work
Listen to a weeklong series of interviews with Scientific American authors and editors on public radio's The Takeaway.	How Much Is Left? The Limits of Earth's Resources A graphical accounting of the limits to what one planet can provide
Death to Humans! Visions of the Apocalypse in Movies and Literature A list of some of our favorite dystopian views of human society facing extinction

6 Comments

1. 1. echandler@talktalk.net 01:51 PM 8/18/10

   A work is published (ISBN 978-0-9508120-1-4) which explains many of the big questions. It is lengthy and not suitable for publication in a science journal. Some extracts are available.

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2. 2. echandler@talktalk.net in reply to echandler@talktalk.net 02:23 PM 8/18/10

   The work describes cosmic phenomena as strings of energy with the solar system an end of string. It is not compatible with the Big Bang theory.

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3. 3. betty7684 10:39 AM 8/25/10

   RE: "when does life belong to the living" In my experience as an operating nurse who did organ procurements for transplant I object to the use of the word "harvest". Wheat is harvested, organs are procured. In the process of organ procurement, bodys are not "ripped open". Donor's were treated with the same care and respect as a living patient. We honored their gift of life. This is a very emotional time for all concerned. My most memorable experience was the donation of a liver from a nine month old infant to a one and a half year old child in another city. I spoke to the transplant surgeon regarding the donor liver, handed the donor liver, in an ice chest, to the pilot who would fly it to the recipient's hospital. Then instead of putting the donor baby in a morgue box, I wrapped him in a blanket and carried him to the morgue.

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4. 4. VictorT 01:08 PM 9/1/10

   The article by T.B. Kirkwood is badly out of date. And the failure to suggest, in the more to explore section, the new book by Jonathan Weiner, Long for this World, is both inexplicable and well below the usual standards of Scientific American

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5. 5. danedwards45 04:35 PM 9/13/10

   As a regular reader of SA in the past, I was intrigued by the cover title of the "The End' issue while browsing a book store. I was sorely disappointed. I was taken aback by the one-sidedness of the opinionated articles. This was a Newsweek-like rag in support of the currently prevalent and popular sky-is-falling mentality, going right along with the dummying down of America. What happened to presenting scienctific data and objective analysis, without foregone, opinion-directed conclusions??? And this was true of most of the articles, not just one; there was even an article, "Democracy's Labratory", that blatantly STATED that science should be used to drive liberal democracy! Amazing. I found the article about dwindling resources, "how much is left?", particularly bothersome, as it appears to pick and choose resourced data to fit the foregone conclusions, with no counterpoints. Ever heard of tar sands, for example? Do you really believe this information?
   Maybe this just happens with SA's special issues, but I doubt it. With this kind of publication, I'm thinking that "The End" is with my buying anymore of your magazines! Maybe you could save a lot of carbon by ending the generation, printing and distribution.

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6. 6. Rufus 04:49 PM 9/30/10

   Time is an illusion. We only live within the here and now, the past cannot be visited and one must wait for a perceived future. Hence the only one-now for each object. The use of the abstract concept of time is different when one considers the scale of all things small and large. A mathematical tool to give us a sense of a perceived reality within our scale of things.

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