Scientific American Magazine

Our highly selective list includes Teflon, dropped calls and the space shuttle

Our pattern-seeking brains and desire to be special help explain our fears of the apocalypse

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

A graphical accounting of the limits to what one planet can provide

For time to end seems both impossible and inevitable. Recent work in physics suggests a resolution to the paradox

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

The world's cultures have been disappearing, taking valuable knowledge with them, but there is reason to hope

The brief, eventful afterlife of a human corpse

With thousands of people on the waiting lists for organs, doctors are bending the rules about when to declare that a donor is dead. Is it ethical to take one life and give it to another?

Could modern civilization really come to an end? Experts take stock of eight doomsday scenarios