Science
Weeds, bugs and lichens must now thrill the imagination
Muted, scrubby grasslands rather than rolling green fields are what excite the naturalist John Wright – and the buzz of stinging insects
The torture of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen
Copenhagen by Michael Frayn is a problem play. It debuted at the National in 1998 and ran for two years…
Unravelling the infinite mysteries of physics
DeepMind’s brilliant co-founder Demis Hassabis hopes to ‘create a machine that can occupy a position in the cosmos once ascribed to an all-powerful divinity’
Who wants to bring back the Neanderthals?
The wholesale ‘de-extinction’ of vanished human species is one of many ethically dicey possibilities in the not-too-distant future, says Adrian Woolfson
Why doesn’t the CDC care about Chinese biolabs in America?
If you rent a cheap Airbnb house in Las Vegas, you might not be altogether surprised to find dead crickets…
What drama gets right and wrong about science
A few days after Tom Stoppard’s death last month, Michael Baum, a distinguished surgeon, wrote a letter to the Times.…
David Deutsch: The Enlightenment, ‘irrational memes’ and how Wikipedia turned woke
The Amazon reviews for David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity don’t alert you to the fact that this is a…
Who will stand up for motherhood?
Scientists at the Oregon Health and Science University have created the beginnings of a baby using not human eggs, but…
The young Tennyson reaches for the stars
Richard Holmes describes how the poet’s early fascination with science – astronomy and geology in particular – would have a lasting influence on his writing
The cultification of science
My, how we all laughed. Thirty years ago the physicist Alan Sokal hoaxed a social science journal into publishing a…
Will we resist the bacteria of the future?
Due to the chronic overuse of antibiotics, the proliferation of certain impervious strains now represents one of the world’s most urgent health threats
The AI apocalypse is the least of our worries
A host of other catastrophes are far more likely to destroy the planet, including solar storms, super volcanoes, nuclear winter, biowarfare and even asteroid strike
The race against Hitler to build the first nuclear bomb
The bomb was necessary to the Allies, but still horrified those responsible for its development – many of them refugees from Nazism
Should we give weight loss jabs to children?
I have seen the future of food. And some of you won’t like it. On a research trip to the…
How the US military became world experts on the environment
In its bid to become a global superpower, the US vastly increased its number of overseas bases in the 1960s, giving it unparalleled knowledge of Earth’s most extreme habitats
Why going nuclear is humanity’s only hope
Powering a rising world population up to a decent standard of living is something only nuclear reactors can do – and it’s mad to think otherwise, argues Tim Gregory
The downfall of climate change poster boy Michael Mann
Even if you’ve never heard of Michael Mann, you will have felt his baleful influence on your energy bills. He…
Controlling AI is the great challenge of our age
The genie is only half out of the bottle, says Richard Susskind, but we should be in a state of high alert – and anyone who thinks otherwise is ‘plain daft’
A piece of Mars to toy with
Lunar souvenirs are slumping, but Martian rocks are soaring as today’s super-rich fight to get the best fragments from space on their desks
We are all people of faith, whether we realise it or not
Reason, narrowly framed, will never reveal the world to us. A better path involves reason harnessed to our ethical and aesthetic impulses, argues Alister McGrath
Time is running out to tackle the dangers posed by AI
While we can all appreciate the benefits of AI, it is developing faster than anyone imagined, with no consensus on what constitutes acceptable risk
How French absolutism powered a techno-progressive revolution
The Enlightenment is back. Despite the best efforts of the past decade of handwringing about cultural imperialism and wailing over…
‘The wickedest man in Europe’ was just an intellectual provocateur
Sir Bernard Mandeville certainly revelled in mischief-making; but his one simple idea – that human beings are animals – seems unremarkable today
Emilie du Châtelet – a lone voice among Enlightenment thinkers
The brilliant physicist’s warning to her contemporaries not to carry respect for great men to the point of idolatry fell on deaf ears
Stuff of legends: the surprising truth about old myths
I visited Mycenae for the first time this autumn. While the ruins of classical Athens can seem almost familiar, the…
