Q&A
Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy
How does consciousness arise in mere flesh and blood? To the neuroscientist Anil Seth, our organic bodies are the key to the experience.
Q&A
Why Extraterrestrial Life May Not Seem Entirely Alien
The zoologist Arik Kershenbaum argues that because some evolutionary challenges are truly universal, life throughout the cosmos may share certain features.
Q&A
This Cosmologist Knows How It’s All Going to End
The astrophysicist and social media phenom Katie Mack is ready to tell you about the fate of the universe.
Multimedia
Arrows of Time
The human mind has long grappled with the elusive nature of time: what it is, how to record it, how it regulates life, and whether it exists as a fundamental building block of the universe.
machine learning
How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Science
The latest AI algorithms are probing the evolution of galaxies, calculating quantum wave functions, discovering new chemical compounds and more. Is there anything that scientists do that can’t be automated?
Q&A
Eclipse Hunter Reveals the Science That Can Only Be Done in the Dark
Even in the age of sun-observing satellites, astronomers like Jay Pasachoff still seek out total solar eclipses for the tales they can tell about our sun.
cosmology
A Debate Over the Physics of Time
According to our best theories of physics, the universe is a fixed block where time only appears to pass.
quantum physics
New Support for Alternative Quantum View
An experiment claims to have invalidated a decades-old criticism against pilot-wave theory, an alternative formulation of quantum mechanics that eliminates the most baffling features of the subatomic universe.
Q&A
Science’s Path From Myth to Multiverse
In his latest book, the Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg explores how science made the modern world, and where it might take us from here.