Top Stories

Paranormal Circumstances: One Influential Scientist's Quixotic Mission to Prove ESP Exists

From his research to his personal life, Daryl Bem's never been one to follow the crowd. 05.14.2012

The World's Most Celebrated Virus Hunter: Ian Lipkin

The Columbia University researcher describes his quest for HIV in San Francisco and SARS in China, the immune cascades that may cause autism, and the infectious roots of psychiatric disease. 05.11.2012

A Sweet View of the Icarus of Comets

Comet C/2011 N3, a 160-foot-wide ball of rock and ice, was brutally incinerated by the sun’s atmosphere. But it was quite a sight. 05.10.2012

Vital Signs: "We Can Take His Heart Out, Remove the Tumor, and Put It Back In"

A patient’s heart tumor is all but inaccessible to 
his surgeons. The only way to deal with it: 
Remove the heart and operate on it outside the body. 05.09.2012

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Science 
Fraud

The geniuses who fudged data, the cheaters who did it in plain sight, and the frauds who got away with it 05.08.2012

Big Idea: Physicists Carve a Niche in Time

Six years ago, physicists hid an object behind an invisibility cloak for the first time. Now they're cloaking actual events. 05.07.2012

How I Contained the Mississippi

A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers commander makes the tough, smart decisions necessary to save cities and lives. 05.04.2012

Real-World Technology That Approaches "The Avengers"

Life imitates art, which imitates research. 05.03.2012

The Beating Heart Donors

They urinate. They have heart attacks 
and bedsores. They have babies. They may even feel pain. 
Meet the organ donors who are “pretty dead.” 05.02.2012

Is Einstein's Greatest Work All Wrong—Because He Didn't Go Far Enough?

From a farmhouse in the English countryside, gentleman scientist Julian Barbour plots to take relativity to its logical extreme and redefine the very nature of gravity, space, and time. 05.01.2012

Your Personal, Automated Mass Transit Vehicle Is on Its Way

Get out of your car and into your flying train, 
superclean superbus, and most impressive of all, your personal subway. 04.30.2012

Ink Wants to Form Neurons, and an Artful Scientist Obliges

Since graduating with his PhD in neuroscience last fall, Greg Dunn has continued to spend his days with neurons--big, golden ones 10,000 times the size of neurons in your brain. 04.30.2012

Star Breeding Grounds

In the right circumstances, humble gas and dust can form into powerful, majestic stars. 04.28.2012

The Big, Overlooked Factor in the Rise of Pandemics: The Human Vector

One secret to 
fighting pandemics 
is knowing 
their real cause: 
disease factories 
built by people. 04.26.2012

Saints + Sinners: Satellite Crashers, Alien-Hunter Funders

04.26.2012

Our Wonderful Age of Abundance, in 9 Striking Infographics

Technology is driving us toward 
an era of exhilarating freedom,
 economic opportunity, and the profound gift of health. 04.24.2012