Technology / Weapons & Security

Big Idea: Seeing Crime Before It Happens

Can remote sensors give us Minority Report-like powers to detect people who will soon break the law? 01.23.2012

#44: New Pentagon Rules Blur Line Between Digital and Physical Warfare


Under the US's new strategy, the military can prepare for cyber warfare just as it prepares for wars on land. 01.03.2012

#97: CIA Said to Exploit Vaccine Drive in Pakistan

To get DNA in their hunt for Osama bin Laden, the CIA may have gone too far. 01.03.2012

#31: First Stealth 
Helicopter Crashes Into Public View


New secret weapon emerges: A chopper with quiet rotors and radar-absorbing skin. 12.29.2011

Dawn of the BioHackers

Do-it-yourself biologists are 
hunting down genetic disorders and 
creating synthetic life-forms 
in garages, closets, and backyards 
around the world.
 10.05.2011

How Pig Guts Became the Next Bright Hope for Regenerating Human Limbs

A remarkable substance 
extracted from pigs enables the body to 
regenerate lost tissue, including fingertips and big chunks of muscle. And that may not be all it can do... 09.26.2011

The Internet May Soon Include All of the Things Around You

As wireless nodes become cheaper and more common, our electronic networks will expand to include many of the non-electronic things you really care about: your missing pants, a new shoelace, and the city’s best produce stand.
 08.22.2011

The Army's Bold Plan to Turn Soldiers Into Telepaths

The U.S. Army wants to allow soldiers to communicate just by thinking. 
The new science of synthetic telepathy could soon make that happen. 07.20.2011

Rare View of a Stealthy Plane

The B-2 debuted in 1988 and remains the only long-range stealth bomber in the world, capable of flying more than 6,000 miles without refueling. 07.13.2011

How to Build the Ultimate Naval Defense: Uber-Powerful Lasers

The U.S. Navy wants to put powerful lasers on its ships to shoot down artillery shells and even cruise missiles at the speed of light (and really, who wouldn't). But there are a few scientific details to sort out before sailors can deploy the beams. "First we want to make sure the physics is right before throwing buckets of salt water over the thing," says Ed Pogue. 06.21.2011

Would You Trade Your Password for Candy? Why You Should Pay Attention to Cryptography

Modern codes protect bank accounts and email, but human error puts all that in danger, say experts on a World Science Festival panel. 06.07.2011

Giant Magnifier Reaches 5,000 Degrees Using Only Sunlight

It was created to research our most powerful weapons, but it's also used to try to protect Earth from cataclysmic destruction. 12.17.2010

The 100 Top Science Stories of 2010

Every year DISCOVER sorts through the scientific accomplishments of the past 12 months, and assembles a list of the coolest experiments, most brilliant discoveries, and most world-changing events. As you page through the countdown to the #1 science story, we think you'll come to the same conclusion we did: 2010 was quite a year. 12.16.2010

The Mathematics of Terrorism

Seemingly random attacks contain an unexpected regularity: the same numerical pattern seen in Wall Street booms and busts. 12.01.2010

Discover Interview: Alarming Tales of International Hacking from a Cyber-Terrorism Czar

Spies and hackers know only too well about the security loopholes that riddle the Internet—and maybe even the guts of our computers. Former presidential advisor Richard Clarke has ideas for how we can prepare for the new world of virtual combat. 11.08.2010

How Does a Terminator Know When to Not Terminate?

In the skies above Afghanistan and along the roadsides of Iraq, unmanned military machines are changing the nature of combat. These robots may soon be making life-or-death decisions themselves. 09.27.2010

X-Ray Vision Is So 20th Century

Researchers are building new systems that see through walls using radiation that's a lot safer than X-rays. 08.02.2010

The Latest Trend in Aircraft: Really, Really Tiny

Microfliers could search for missing people, detect bombs, and perhaps even deliver drugs inside the human body. 03.04.2010

Destination Science: The Pretty, Desolate Spot Where the Nuclear Age Began

The Trinity Site in New Mexico is safer than you'd think, and you have to look hard to see the signs of its momentous place in history. 03.03.2010

Countdown to Fusion: National Ignition Facility in Pictures

Researchers at Livermore National Lab expect to be producing energy with a controlled, self-sustaining fusion reaction within three years. 04.14.2009

#7: Invisibility Becomes More than Just a Fantasy

Researchers are cloaking materials from light, sound, and even matter itself. 12.21.2008

#32: DNA Sleuthing Cracks the Anthrax Case

Microbial forensics seems to have solved an infamous whodunnit. 12.16.2008

#48: Cyber Attacks May Be Connected With Real War

As tensions with Russia mounted, Georgia got slammed by hackers. 12.13.2008

#89: Archaeologists Find the World’s Oldest Arrowheads

While others were still hurling spears, these ancient people were felling prey with arrows. 12.07.2008

Forecasting the Future May Be a Matter of Fun and Games

A new online game uses crowdsourcing to find out how to save humans from extinction. 09.05.2008

The Science of Sniffing Out Liars

An interrogation expert spills his secrets. 07.28.2008

Can You Spot the Chinese Nuclear Sub?

Widely available satellite imagery is making governments around the world awfully nervous. 07.21.2008

Tiny Spies to Take Over the Skies

Four-and-a-half inch aircraft are providing a bird's-eye view of Iraq. 06.12.2008

The Beautiful Mind of Freeman Dyson

Thoughts and illustrations from the head of a science legend. 06.09.2008

3 People Who Are Pushing the Edge of Science

Growing electronics with viruses, finding alien life, and quantum privacy protection. 05.30.2008

The Secret History of CIA Spy Technology

A new book by CIA insiders reveals the most James Bond-like real-world spy devices. 05.30.2008

Hands-On at the Nation's Largest Robot Skunk Works

New bots will explore everything from Mars to your mouth—and perform surgery. 05.08.2008

Is That a Gun in Your Pocket or Are You a Size 2?

Radar peers beneath clothes to find weapons—and the perfect pair of jeans. 03.31.2008

Has Science Found a Way to End All Wars?

Given adequate food, fuel, and gender equality, mass conflict just might disappear. 03.13.2008

The Sim That Saves People from Each Other

Computer modeling shows how to keep crowds from turning deadly. 03.03.2008

Stupid Science Word of the Month: Barn

A physics joke that bombed. Atomically. 01.29.2008

The 8 Ways To Blow Up a Satellite

What works and what doesn’t—not that you should try this at home. 11.19.2007

What To Do Before the Asteroid Strikes

The doomsday rock is out there. It’s just a matter of time... 11.01.2007

NASA's 6 Best Earth-Based Research Projects

Ultrafast scramjets, mach-10 wind tunnels, cockpit displays that see through clouds... 10.17.2007

The Most Important Future Military Technologies

Super lasers, binoculars that read minds, manipulating the "human terrain"... 10.04.2007

The 9/11 Cover-Up

Thousands of New Yorkers were endangered by WTC debris—and government malfeasance. 09.07.2007

Homeland Insecurity

Anti-terrorism efforts vary from the marginally effective to the utterly pointless. 08.24.2007

Fingerprint Technique Shows What You've Eaten

Researchers can see the contaminants in an individual fingerprint. 08.03.2007

The First Nuclear Refugees Come Home

Chernobyl-area natives return to find a city of ghosts. 06.08.2007

Air Force Ponders Bat-Planes

Nimble wings may inspire aircraft of the future. 05.15.2007

Return of Nuclear Winter

Proliferation gives new life to old fear. 05.03.2007

Radioactive Boy Scout

Teenager achieves nuclear fusion at home 03.06.2007

Peer Review: Fighting the Terrorist Virus

If terrorism is cultivated by modern media, how do we fight it? 12.04.2006

Science in the Crosshairs

Iraq's legacy as a mecca of learning falls casualty to chaos. 11.08.2006

The Truth About Liquid Bombs

Promising new technologies could sniff out liquid bombs. But can their limitations be overcome? 11.01.2006

The No-Touch Pat-Down

One of the latest—and most amusing—gizmos in airport security: the air puffer 10.23.2006

Neighborhood Watch Goes High Tech

Monitor your neighbors—or the Texas-Mexico border—right from your computer. 09.01.2006

Seconds From Disaster

Japan installs the world's first nationwide earthquake-detector system. 09.01.2006

Going Atomic... Again

America plans its first new nuclear warhead in two decades 09.01.2006

Enigma: The Final Riddle

Cryptologists working to crack Nazi code. 08.01.2006

Boot Camp Just Got Harder

The Army adds shock treatment to target practice. 08.01.2006

The Future of Terrorism

Neutron cameras versus smuggled nuclear bombs. Biodetectors versus bioengineered smallpox. Is technology making us safer—or more vulnerable? 07.25.2006

Jason Struggles with Pandora's Box

Ann Finkbeiner's book peers inside a clandestine group of American military scientists. 07.19.2006

Infectious Defense

Biowarfare expert David R. Franz on the real risk of bioterrorism, Saddam's non-existent WMDs, and how HIV/AIDS might prevent us from eliminating the next smallpox. 06.14.2006

Marburg and Ebola Vaccine

Army scientists could rout bioterror attack. 05.01.2006

Look Back

Look Back 11.22.2005

End of the Plutonium Age

The American Century was built on a toxic metal, one we still know very little about 11.22.2005

Prints Are King

11.25.2004

Emerging Technology

Fingerprinting could be the best way to put cybercriminals under your thumb 10.01.2004

Politics

01.02.2004

Do I Know You?

11.24.2003

Colonial Tough Guys

02.01.2003

Future Tech

That's the challenge confronting face-recognition experts who hope to protect us from terrorists—to identify every single human on the planet 09.01.2002

Future Tech

Can Big Brother see right through your clothes? 07.01.2002

Future Tech

A powered exoskeleton could transform the average joe into a supersoldier 02.01.2002

Shield of Dreams

A critical look at the science and technology required to build an antiballistic system that would make the United States invulnerable to a missile attack 11.01.2001

Winner - $100,000 Christopher Columbus Foundation Award

Richard Craig, PhD; Staff Scientist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Richland, Washington 07.01.2001

Saving The Children

Discover Magazine Innovation Awards 07.01.2001

Go Slower, Get There Faster

The whole country is stuck in traffic. But good science can fix that 06.01.2001

The Nitrogen Bomb

By learning to draw fertilizer from a clear blue sky, chemists have fed the multitudes. they've also unleashed a fury as threatening as atomic energy 04.01.2001

Armageddon in a Can

10.01.2000

Future Tech

09.01.2000

Battle Fatigues

04.01.2000

Smart Bra

10.01.1999

Smart Guns Don't Kill Kids

The technology is here: Why can't you buy one? 09.01.1999

Mobile Robot Bombs

06.01.1999

War Without Death

The military is gearing up for weapons that don't kill 04.01.1999

Eric Juengst

02.01.1999

Iris ID

01.01.1999

The Year in Science: Environment 1997

Iodine Wind 01.01.1998

The Gulf War Within

When soldiers returning from the war complained of mysterious illness, the Pentagon called it stress. But the real culprit, it appears, was deadly chemistry. 08.01.1997

The Color of Stress

05.01.1997

The Floating Zoo

The air teems with viruses, bacteria, fungi, and other microscopic creatures. They can cross oceans on a gust of wind. Some can cause crop failures, disease, and death. Some can be used as invisible weapons, and we know next to nothing about them. 02.01.1997

The Unfinished War

01.01.1997

Chemicals at War

01.01.1996

Anniversary

01.01.1996

The Golden Boat

01.01.1996

Ramming Speed

Aerospace engineers are crossing a cannon with a jet engine and hitting five times the speed of sound without leaving the ground. 03.01.1994

A Case of Nerves

In the name of peace, the Army will soon start incinerating millions of aging weapons filled with lethal nerve gas and mustard gas. But some residents of Utah, where the burning will begin, are a bit worried by that. 11.01.1993

Bombs Away

04.01.1992