The Inner Lives of Robots: An Interview with Filmmaker Alex Garland
The writer–director of Ex Machina talks robot consciousness, mass surveillance and trying to wrap his head around the multiverse
Stories by Seth Fletcher
Immunizing the Internet [Video]
Scientific American contributor Keren Elazari argues in a 2014 TED talk that securing cyberspace is impossible without the help of hackers.
How Transparency Will Change The World [Video]
Daniel Dennett and Deb Roy explain why digital technology will drive organizations into an evolutionary arms race
What Chappie Says, and Doesn't Say, About Artificial Intelligence
I'm not a scold about scientific accuracy in film. As long as a movie is not built on a fundamentally stupid premise (“Lucy,” the Scarlet Johansson vehicle predicated on the false notion that humans use only 10 percent of their brains, comes to mind), I am happy to let myself be entertained...
Hunting Black Holes at the South Pole
Each of the telescopes that the astronomers of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) are currently working to bring into their black-hole-observing, planet-size array is a special case.
The New Chevy Volt Is Impressively Unremarkable
Over the holidays, while visiting family in Southwest Missouri, where I grew up, I saw one of the oddest sights on local roadways since armadillos started showing up as road kill: multiple Chevrolet Volts...
10 Weirdest Things You've Taken Through Airport Security: Survey Results
This week millions of people will find themselves standing in an airport-security line, hoping their supposedly travel-size toiletries don’t create a national security incident.
What Was the Most Disappointing New Technology of 2014?
Tell us what big tech announcement or new gadget made you roll your eyes
First Flexible Airplane Wing Takes Flight
In our May 2014 issue, Sridhar Kota, a professor of engineering at the University of Michigan and founder and president of the company FlexSys, published an article about his long-running campaign to take complex, multipart machines and redesign them as flexible, one-piece devices (subscription required)...
Screens That Correct for Your Vision and More World Changing Ideas [VIDEO]
A closer look at some of the breakthroughs on the cover of the December issue of Scientific American
Quasars, Black Holes and the Origins of Intercontinental Radio Astronomy
Not long ago I came across a piece in the Scientific American archives from the earliest days of very-long baseline radio interferometry, the technique employed by the Event Horizon Telescope...
World Changing Ideas 2014
10 problem-solving, planet-improving, lifesaving advances set to drive progress in the years ahead
What’s the Weirdest Thing You’ve Brought through Airport Security?
Gold medallions? Unfortunately martial-looking instruments of science? Send us your stories and photos
The Black Hole in Interstellar Looks Amazingly Realistic
Wired has a fun piece about physicist and black-hole guru Kip Thorne's work on the film Interstellar, which comes out November 7. We've known the premise of the film for a long time: Earth is a disaster, the human race is on the verge of extinction, and mankind must find a new home...
Secretive Company Claims Battery Breakthrough
The Michigan start-up Sakti3 says its solid-state cells more than double the energy density of today’s best Li-Ion batteries
Astronomers Prepare to Give ALMA a Heart Transplant
Before they can see Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, the astronomers of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) must complete an epic to-do list.
Quantum Computer Fails Speed Test
How hard can it be to determine whether a computer works as promised? Step one: turn it on. Step two: Try to solve some problems. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
Time Travel: Installing an Atomic Clock at 15,000 Feet
A few months ago I went to Cambridge, Mass. to check in with the Event Horizon Telescope crew and found Shep Doeleman, the project leader, fresh off the completion of a major purchase.
Cloud Bound for Milky Way's Black Hole Puzzles Astronomers
For the past year, astronomers around the world have been watching the center of the Milky Way in anticipation of a once-per-eon event. Right around now (or, technically, 24,000 years ago--that's roughly how far away the galactic center is in light years), a cloud of gas and dust plummeting toward our galaxy's supermassive black hole, [...]..
How To Build An Earth-Size Telescope
Looking into the galactic center is hard. So much dust and gas lies between us and the center of the Milky Way that very little of the visible light emitted there makes it to us.
