Physics Watch: Fusion's Future?
Will tomorrow's power plants run on a few ounces of hydrogen and boron instead of several hundred tons of coal? Physicist Hendrik Monkhorst is betting on it.
by Jeffrey Winters
Ocean Watch: Bringing Tube Worms Back Alive
Until James Childress built his unique aquarium, you could find live tube worms only on the ocean floor, at depths of two miles or more.
Archeology Watch:A Natural History of Mummies
How did the ancient Egyptians perfect their sophisticated mummification techniques? Before preserving flesh, they may have practiced for centuries on skeletons.
The Code Breaker
Instead of patiently unraveling life's secrets gene by gene, we can now read them at breakneck speed—thanks in great part to an ingenious, admired, despised, once aimless and now wealthy biologist named Craig Venter.
The Great Gene Escape
The seed companies say the plants they've created are safe. But who's to know what will come from a romp in the field with an untamed weed?
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Baby
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Baby
Human in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Fertility clinics have been called the Wild West of medicine—an unregulated world where a dead man can impregnate a stranger and where a child can have five parents.
Saviors
Someday the transplant you need may be growing on the hoof—or in a lab.
Ontogeny Recapitulated
Biologists are learning how to turn on the genes that make our cells young. With them, we might repair our bones. Replenish our blood. Replace our limbs. And maybe some brain cells too.
A Clone of One's Own
First sheep, then cows, soon monkeys: It's only a matter of time until the first human clone is cooing in its—uh, mother's?—arms.
Tempting Fates
If you could dictate the content of your kid's genes, wouldn't you? Shouldn't you?
Night Watchman: Cosmic Clutter
We've put thousands of objects intoorbit. Many are visible—but only now.