Watch SpaceX Launch the First of Its Global Internet Satellites
Update: On Wednesday, SpaceX delayed its Vandenberg launch due to strong winds; the targeted launch time is now 6:17 AM Pacific on Thursday, February 22. Last week, SpaceX realized a decade-long dream of successfully launching the most powerful rocket in the world. The Falcon Heavy’s achievement, marked resoundingly with thunderous sonic booms following twin booster…
The Physics of a Puzzling Perpetual Motion Machine
Perpetual motion—it's fun to say that. For some people, perpetual motion machines hold the secret to everlasting free energy that will save the world. To them, it's a machine that is just beyond our grasp. If only we could tweak our design just a little bit, it would work. To others (like me), perpetual motion…
Trump's Plan to Redefine Gender Makes No Scientific Sense
What’s supposed to be simple is, you got a sperm and you got an egg—each one carrying roughly half the genes of the person who made it. They fuse. You get an embryo, and it’s destined to be male or female. So, not so simple. Sex (broadly, the biology of reproduction) and gender (broadly, one’s…
Robots Can't Hold Stuff Very Well, But You Can Help
Imagine, for a moment, the simple act of picking up a playing card from a table. You have a couple of options: Maybe you jam your fingernail under it for leverage, or drag it over the edge of the table. Now imagine a robot trying to do the same thing. Tricky: Most robots don’t have…
Astronomers Creep Up to the Edge of the Milky Way’s Black Hole
For the first time, scientists have spotted something wobbling around the black hole at the core of our galaxy. Their measurements suggest that this stuff—perhaps made of blobs of plasma—is spinning not far from the innermost orbit allowed by the laws of physics. If so, this affords astronomers their closest look yet at the funhouse-mirrored…
10 Women in Science and Tech Who Should Be Household Names
It’s International Women’s Day, a time to celebrate the achievements of women around the world and throughout history. But the day is also about recognizing the hardships women face and the continued urgency of the fight for gender equality. That is true of WIRED’s world too—the world of technology and science, of media and innovation.…
Physicists Condemn Sexism Through ‘Particles for Justice’
This week, of all weeks, should have been triumphant for women in physics. For her work on lasers, Canadian physicist Donna Strickland became the first female Nobel Laureate for the field after 55 years. She finally joined a short list consisting of just two other women, Marie Curie and Maria Goeppert-Mayer. But Seyda Ipek barely…
The Human Cell Atlas Is Biologists' Latest Grand Project
Aviv Regev speaks with the urgent velocity of someone who has seen the world with an extraordinary new acuity, and can’t wait for you to hurry up and see it too. At a meeting of 460 international scientists gathered last week in San Francisco, the computational biologist bombarded her audience with a torrent of results…
Take a Good Look, America. This Is What the Reckoning Looks Like
By at least one metric, we humans are dumber than frogs. The fable goes that if you toss a frog in a pot of hot water, it’ll leap right out. Put it in cold water, though, and bring it slowly to a boil, and the frog won’t notice before it’s too late. That turns out…
The Serious Security Problem Looming Over Robotics
They call it Herb2. It’s a dapper robot, wearing a bowtie even while it sits at home in its lab at the University of Washington. Its head is a camera, which it cranes up and down, taking in the view of a dimly lit corner where two computer monitors sit. All perfectly normal stuff for…