Humans and bacteria are in a perpetual war. For most of history, bacteria won. Before 1928, a simple scrape on the knee, a cut when cooking dinner, or giving birth could lead to death from infection. The discovery of penicillin, a molecule secreted from mold, changed the balance. For the first time, humans had a way to fight back. Since then, generations...

FUTURE The CEO of Zoom Wants AI Clones in Meetings Nilay Patel | The Verge “Like virtually every other company, Zoom now has a big investment in AI—and [CEO Eric Yuan’s] visions for what that AI will do are pretty wild. Eric really wants you to stop having to attend Zoom meetings yourself. You’ll hear him describe how he thinks one of the big benefits...

In 1997, Jeanne Calment passed away at the age of 122 and a half. The longest living human documented to date, she pushed the boundary of what was previously considered the maximum human lifespan. Meanwhile, in 2023, Guinness World Records recognized Pat the mouse as the oldest mouse alive at a little over nine and a half years old—just a sliver in...

The mysterious dark side of the moon is a challenging target for space missions. But China has now completed its second successful touchdown and collected a sample of lunar soil, which is currently on its way back to Earth. The great space powers are currently locked in a race to return humans to the moon and even establish a more permanent presence...

Chatbots are now posing as friends, romantic partners, and departed loved ones. Now, we can add another to the list: Your future self. MIT Media Lab’s Future You project invited young people, aged 18 to 30, to have a chat with AI simulations of themselves at 60. The sims—which were powered by a personalized chatbot and included an AI-generated image...

On a fall evening in 2022, scientists at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory were busy with the final stages of a planetary defense mission. As Andy Rivkin, one of the team leaders, was getting ready to appear in NASA’s live broadcast of the experiment, a colleague posted a photo of a pair of asteroids: the half-mile-wide Didymos...