Get in-depth coverage of current and future trends in technology, and how they are shaping business, entertainment, communications, science, politics, and society.
You can go ahead and assume President Trump’s proposed federal budget will never be the actual federal budget. Members of Congress from every political persuasion will find a lot to hate about it, and they’re the ones who have to approve it—assuming they can sort out the arcane, procrustean rules for getting any budget passed in Washington. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
You’ve heard the hype: The quantum computer revolution is coming. Physicists say these devices will be fast enough to break every encryption method banks use today. Their artificial intelligence will be so advanced that you could load in the periodic table and the laws of quantum mechanics, and they could design the most efficient solar cell to date. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
On a plate, a single banana seems whimsical—yellow and sweet, contained in its own easy-to-open peel. It is a charming breakfast luxury as silly as it is delicious and ever-present. Yet when you eat a banana the flavor on your tongue has complex roots, equal parts sweetness and tragedy. In 1950, most bananas were exported from Central America. Guatemala in particular was a key piece of a vast empire of banana plantations run by the American-owned United Fruit Company. Learn about your ad choices...
Last week, as tens of thousands of US and South Korean soldiers gathered at a base in Iwakuni, Japan for an annual joint military exercise, North Korea fired four ballistic missiles from Pyongyang into the sea off Japan’s northwest coast. In a world where the US is headed by a Twigger-happy political neophyte and the risk of a Cold War reboot looms larger with each Wikileaks disclosure, this demonstration wasn’t just an empty display of dictatorial propaganda. Learn about your ad choices: doveta...
Namrata Udeshi knows how to globally analyze the proteomics of human cells. You’d be forgiven for having no idea what that means or why it matters—it’s a complicated technique that you’d need years of post-graduate training to master. But for now, just know it’s important for disease research. Udeshi is a group leader in a proteomics lab at MIT’s Broad Institute, working long days to understand the intricacies of cellular life. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
These days, more people are working from home, shopping from home, and yes, even seeing the doctor from home. Last year more than a million people traded the waiting room for the comfort of their own couch—which sure beats thumbing through a sad collection of creased magazines. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Today, in his first speech to his staff at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, newly minted Secretary Ben Carson delivered an extemporaneous disquisition on the unparalleled marvel that is the human brain and memory. “There is nothing in this universe that even begins to compare with the human brain and what it is capable of,” he began. “Billions and billions of neurons, hundreds of billions of interconnections. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
A few years back, a prospective doctoral student sought out Sylvia Serfaty with some existential questions about the apparent uselessness of pure math. Serfaty, then newly decorated with the prestigious Henri Poincaré Prize, won him over simply by being honest and nice. “She was very warm and understanding and human,” said Thomas Leblé, now an instructor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
I don't know how to start this analysis without a spoiler. I can try settingit up with ageneric physics question, but if you are behind on the excellent SyFy program The Expanse, you may want to walk away and do something else, like read about why flying at light speed is pretty much impossible unless you're Han Solo. Still with me? OK. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
This storyoriginally appeared on Gristand is part of theClimate Deskcollaboration. For two decades, Florence Williams could sit on her porch at night and watch the alpenglow on the Rocky Mountains. Then she moved from remote Colorado to Washington, DC, and started noticing the changes. “I felt disoriented, overwhelmed, depressed,” she writes in her recent book, The Nature Fix. “My mind had trouble focusing. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
UC Berkeley undergraduate Megha Majumder was fired up. Just a few weeks after Feng Zhang, MIT, and the Broad Institute won the interference proceeding over Crispr/Cas9 patents against UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna, solidifying Zhang’s patent claims and the vast rewards they promise, Majumder learned of Zhang’s upcoming public talk at her college. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
After one of the most quiet years in decades, Etna has decided to make 2017 a little more exciting. Early this week, the volcano had a moderate strombolian eruption, what the folks who monitor Etna call a “paroxysm,” that produced a lava fountain over the summit of the volcano. Strombolian eruptions(named after nearby Stromboli)are caused by gas-rich magma reaching the surface and erupting explosively. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
California likes whiplash weather. The state’s greenery, rivers, and dams are used to dry summer and wet winters. But recently—as the land has gone from parched and on fire to a complete deluge—things have gotten out of hand. From the strained Oroville dam to the flooding in San Jose last weekend, all this water, water everywhere has a single meteorological source: atmospheric rivers. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
SpaceX is planning to send two private individuals on a trip around the moon sometime next year. In a phone briefing today, CEO Elon Musk gave details of the mission, which would use two of SpaceX‘s long-awaited technologies: a crew-rated capsule, the Crew Dragon, and the high-powered Falcon Heavy rocket. The two mystery astronauts will be packed inside the capsule, stacked on top of a Falcon Heavy. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
It's 5:15 a.m. and dark when I drive over Raton Pass, the 7,835-foot-high saddle right at the boundary between Colorado and New Mexico. Animal crossing signs whiz by my window: first a clip-art bear, then an elk, then a deer. "Watch out" is an apt way to enter the state, particularly on this trip: New Mexico is the birthplace of the nuclear bomb and the site of its first test. That initial blast occurred southeast of Socorro, under the auspices of Los Alamos National Lab-led Manhattan Project. L...
Forty light years away, a small, orange star called Trappist-1 sits unnoticed in the sky. You can’t see it with your bare eyes—it burns colder than the brightly shining stars that fill the night sky, the ones that have inspired millions of people to imagine life beyond Earth. But most stars in the galaxy are neither big nor bright. And it’s those abundant, dim dwarfs that might actually be the best place to look for worlds capable of supporting life. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org...
One of the best ways to measure wind speed is to usean anemometer. You could go out and buy one, but I find it much more fun to build my own. There areseveral types of anemometer tochoose from, but I am going to build one that uses electromagnetic induction. Normally, we think of electric potential as something you can get from a battery. But you also can get it from induction. It turns out that changing magnetic field also creates an electric potential. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx...
Donna Harold isn’t worried about the river. “Some of our neighbors panicked and left,” she says, “but we stayed behind.” She turns and shushes the pair of toddlers squabbling in the red wagon behind her. Late Sunday night, state officials sent out an evacuation order saying that Lake Oroville—30 miles north, feeding into the Feather River that runs through Harold’s hometown of Marysville—was hemorrhaging water and in danger of bursting. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
SPOILER ALERT. I'm going to talk about Star Wars: The Force Awakens. If you haven't seen it by now, I have a feeling that you either don't really care about the movie or you don't care about spoilers. But don't worry, I'm not going to give away anything major. Still-you have been warned. In one scene in the movie, Han Solo and Finn (oh, and Chewbacca too) are trying to get on the surface of the Star Killer to disable the shields. Here is the important dialogue as they approach the planet. Learn ...
Let's say you find yourself in the airport in Kuala Lumpur. A stranger approaches with a spray bottle and a fistful of money and points to a man who looks more than a bit like the half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. Must be a coincidence, you think. The stranger explains that she'd like you to star in a hilarious prank TV show that asks ordinary citizens to spray random people with water for the lulz. What's the risk, right? Right? Wrong. Congratulations. Learn about your ad choic...
Lake Oroville contains about 3.2 million acre feet of water, making it the second-largest reservoir in California. It provides water for more than 22 million people and 700,000 acres of farmland. The lakenearly ruptured this week, swollen by a constant deluge of rain that overwhelmed the spillways and threatened to flood everything downstream. Keeping California properly hydrated requires some of the most complicated plumbing in the world. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
The fight over who owns the most promising technique for editing genes-cutting and pasting the stuff of life to cure disease and advance scientific knowledge-has been a rough one. A team on the West Coast, at UC Berkeley, filed patents on the method, Crispr-Cas9; a team on the East Coast, based at MIT and the Broad Institute, filed their own patents in 2014 after Berkeley's, but got them granted first. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Your friend is on the floor unconscious. The culprit: a heroin overdose. You panic, but then remember a gadget that can save her life. She told you where it would be if this ever happened, didn’t she? You run to her bedside table, fling open the drawer, and grab the compact purple and yellow injector. After you pull off the lid, the device speaks, telling you to place the plastic case on your friend’s thigh, press down, and dispense the life-saving drug inside. Learn about your ad choices: dovet...
A very long time ago in a faraway galaxy, a star blew up. When the flash of light finally reached Earth on October 6, 2013, nobody noticed. Not at first. Three hours of supernova photons streamed by before an old telescope perched on a mountain north of San Diego started snapping pics. The 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope is a 60-year old veteran of astronomical missions. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
I am super pumped up about the Iron Fist series that will premiere on Netflix soon. At this point, all I really have is this trailer-but that has never stopped me before. Why would it stop me now? If you don't know anything about Iron Fist, let me say one important thing. Other than being a martial arts guy, he also has the ability to make this superpowered punch. (That's what's going on in the trailer when his hand gets all glowing and stuff. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-cho...
Squid and their cephalopod brethren have been the inspiration for many a science fiction creature. Their slippery appendages, huge proportions, and inking abilities can be downright shudder-inducing. (See: Arrival.) But you should probably be more concerned by the cephalopod’s huge brain—which not only helps it solve tricky puzzles, but also lets it converse in its own sign language. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Ed Rivera-Valentin grew up in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, less than 15 minutes away from the jungle home of a 1,000-foot-wide radio telescope. When he was four or five, his parents brought him to the observatory for the first time. He saw the telescope’s mesh dish, resting inside a huge sinkhole in the soft rock formations that shape the region. If he had walked around the Arecibo radio telescope’s dish, he would have clocked more than a mile. The young Rivera-Valentin was awed. Learn about your ad ch...
As part of WIRED’s exclusive look at Breaking2, Nike’s revolutionary attempt to break the two-hour marathon mark, our writer is using the same training regime, apparel, and expertise as Nike’s three elite athletes—including Olympic gold medalist Eliud Kipchoge—to try to achieve his own personal milestone: a sub-90-minute half-marathon. This is the second in a series of monthly updates on his progress. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
On a clear night last September, at a little Ontario airport, two pilots, two scientists, and an engineer took off in a small plane. They’d pulled the left-side door off its hinges, and a telescope poked out of the portal—not at the night sky, but at the ground below. The team was about to play a very difficult, very windy game of catch. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Last night, football fans witnessed the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history. With eight minutes and 30 seconds left in the third quarter, the New England Patriots were down 28-3. But they inched forward until they pushed the game into overtime—a first for the Super Bowl—and Patriots quarterback Tom Brady marched his team down the field to win Super Bowl LI. It was an epic turnaround—but it wasn’t really the Patriots that made it happen. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choice...
