Anurag Acharya’s problem was that the Google search bar is very smart, but also kind of dumb. As a Googler working on search 13 years ago, Acharya wanted to make search results encompass scholarly journal articles. A laudable goal, because unlike the open web, most of the raw output of scientific research was invisible—hidden behind […]
It's time once again to turn on The Monitor, WIRED's roundup of the latest in the world of culture, from music news to casting announcements. In today's installment: Radiohead gets the "OK" from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; Miley Cyrus looks into Black Mirror; and the 2019 box office results walk like a […]
Furious pop cultural obsessiveness seemed like righteous, antagonistic fun when we started this column eight years ago. But somewhere along the line, that particular strain of hyperbolic fanboy zealotry curdled. Maybe it’s because geek culture is no longer niche—quibbling about Wakanda’s vibranium reserves is different when Black Panther has evolved from an obscure comic into […]
Among the brilliant theorists cloistered in the quiet woodside campus of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Edward Witten stands out as a kind of high priest. The sole physicist ever to win the Fields Medal, mathematics’ premier prize, Witten is also known for discovering M-theory, the leading candidate for a unified […]
Rich Lee had armor implanted in his shins in 2016. Soft until struck, the polymerfoam tubes could withstand the full force of a baseball bat swing. The procedure seemed promising—until his stitches burst, prompting him to rip out the tubes. It hurt like hell, but it won’t stop him from his next trial. Lee is […]
The robotic platform heaves, as if breathing. Atop it stretches a piece of white gauze with a blue line painted down the middle. Along this line another robot snips with little surgical scissors, waiting for the platform to come to a brief rest before making a cut. And another snip, and rest. And another, and […]
Next December, there'll be a new entrant into the end-of-year, blockbuster science fiction movie category: the Peter Jackson film Mortal Engines. A teaser trailer for it dropped just before the holidays, and there's really only one thing you need to know about it. Driving cities. Driving cities! Now, I know the movie is based on […]
For a very long time, conventional wisdom held that swearing was not a useful response to pain. Many psychologists believed that swearing would actually make pain feel worse, thanks to a cognitive distortion known as catastrophizing. When we catastrophize we leap to the conclusion that the bad thing that is currently happening is the absolute […]
It took ten years to build the Maverick, a dorm-fridge-sized box that takes in a cartridge with a little bit of blood—more than a drop but, you know, not a pint, either—and spits out new knowledge. On the cartridge is a silicon chip carved with antibody-lined channels; if any of a range of molecules that […]
This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Chris Sayer pushed his way through avocado branches and grasped a denuded limb. It was stained black, as if someone had ladled tar over its bark. In February, the temperature had dropped below freezing for three hours, killing the limb. The thick leaves had shriveled […]