A strange phenomenon at the furthest edges of our solar system was recently studied in greater detail, thanks to NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. In this outer region of the solar system, particles that come from our Sun and interstellar space interact. As the name suggests interstellar space is the area between stars, between solar systems. This outer... Continue Reading →

John McDonnell has announced that Labour may include a trial of Universal Basic Income (UBI) in the next Labour Party Manifesto. UBI – state provision of unconditional monthly stipends to all adult citizens – has been justified on myriad grounds: citizenship, welfare reform, growth. However, its biggest and, as yet, unexplored contribution may be to physical health and it... Continue Reading →

Germany was supposed to be a model for solving global warming. In 2007, the country’s government announced that it would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by the year 2020. This was the kind of bold, aggressive climate goal scientists said was needed in all developed countries. If Germany could do it, it... Continue Reading →

Elizabeth Warren has a big idea that challenges how the Democratic Party thinks about solving the problem of inequality. Instead of advocating for expensive new social programs like free college or health care, she’s introducing a bill Wednesday, the Accountable Capitalism Act, that would redistribute trillions of dollars from rich executives and shareholders to the... Continue Reading →

Robotic workers might sound like science fiction, but they're increasingly becoming science fact. Automation has already been blamed for taking jobs away from humans. And as technology such as autonomous vehicles and cashier-free convenience stores continues to improve, those fears are only going to get worse. Throwing humanoid robots into the mix could take those... Continue Reading →

When the disembodied cockroach leg twitched, Yeongin Kim knew he had finally made it. A graduate student at Stanford, Kim had been working with an international team of neuroengineers on a crazy project: an artificial nerve that acts like the real thing. Like sensory neurons embedded in our skin, the device—which kind of looks like... Continue Reading →

Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto—the entity formed by Canada, Ontario, and the city of Toronto—have shared an early peek of design plans for Sidewalk Toronto, the much-hyped waterfront revitalization project that’s been touted as “the world’s first neighborhood built from the internet up.” Unveiled this week at a roundtable for community feedback, a set... Continue Reading →

What if artificial intelligence can’t cure cancer after all? That’s the message of a big Wall Street Journal post-mortem on Watson, the IBM project that was supposed to turn IBM’s computing prowess into a scalable program that could deliver state-of-the-art personalized cancer treatment protocols to millions of patients around the world. Watson in general, and... Continue Reading →

Hyperloop has been with us for half a decade now, but it's still hard to separate the hype from the reality. In the five years since Elon Musk published his open-source concept for a supersonic floating tube-train, some very real progress has been made. But promises have also been broken, and the dream of a... Continue Reading →

At the 2018 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, US President Donald Trump shared the message that the United States is, and will continue to be, great. "Will soon be heading to Davos, Switzerland, to tell the world how great America is and is doing," Trump tweeted before he arrived. "Our economy is now booming... Continue Reading →