Imagine falling feet-first toward a black hole. At first, if the black hole were isolated and you began far enough away, the experience would not feel supernatural. You would be in free fall. There is no invisible cosmic hand suddenly grabb...
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The internet contains billions of websites, streams enormous quantities of video, connects data centers across continents and crosses oceans through cables thousands of kilometers long. So i...
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Suppose you buy a brand-new one-terabyte SSD and place it on an impossibly precise scale. Then you fill every available byte with photographs, films, documents and music. Has the drive becom...
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A bitcoin cannot be held in your hand. It does not represent a legal claim on a company, pay a dividend or give its owner a stream of rental income. There is no warehouse containing one bar...
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You type a search into Google, press Enter, and nothing happens. The page spins. Gmail refuses to load. Drive throws an error. Within seconds, one of the internet's most common diagnostic qu...
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A penguin standing on ice looks as though someone designed a bird with a torso, two feet and almost nothing in between. Its legs seem impossibly short, and when it starts walking, the famili...
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Watch a turkey closely and its stare can seem almost unnervingly steady. Its eyes sit high on the sides of its head, scanning the surroundings while the bird walks, feeds and watches for dan...
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Look down at almost any laptop, desktop keyboard or smartphone in the English-speaking world and the first six letters are the same: Q-W-E-R-T-Y. The arrangement feels so inevitable that it...
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Ask a modern AI whether it is frightened, lonely or aware of its own existence and it may produce an answer that sounds uncannily introspective. It can discuss its “thoughts,” describe imagi...
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Science-fiction space battles have trained us to expect a particular soundtrack: engines roar, lasers crack and exploding spacecraft detonate with a cinematic boom. Put the same battle in th...
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