Every email address contains a tiny piece of computing history. Between a person's name and the domain sits a character that most of us type without thinking: @.It seems inevitable now. We read name@example.com almost instinctively as “name...
Read article
Open the Voynich Manuscript and almost everything about it looks tantalizingly close to comprehension. Lines of neat handwriting run from left to right. Words are separated by spaces. Paragr...
Read
Few words sound more futuristic than “robot.” It belongs to Mars rovers, factory arms, humanoid machines and today's arguments about artificial intelligence. Yet the word did not originate i...
Read
On the evening of May 17, 1884, New Yorkers witnessed a sight strange enough to compete with the bridge beneath it. A procession of circus animals moved across the East River from Manhattan...
Read
You open a social-media app to check one headline. A war update leads to a natural disaster, which leads to political outrage, an economic warning and a frightening health story. Twenty minu...
Read
Your passport knows exactly how old you are. Your cells are a more complicated matter. Two people born on the same day can reach middle age with very different cardiovascular health, physica...
Read
For many Americans, Labor Day means a three-day weekend, backyard cookouts, crowded beaches, college football and the unofficial end of summer. Retailers turn it into a sales event, swimming...
Read
When a tropical system appears in the Atlantic, the urge to watch it move across a map can become almost compulsive. A disturbance off Africa becomes a colored area on an outlook. A few days...
Read
On most nights, Americans who want to see the northern lights need to travel a very long way north. Then the Sun becomes unusually active, NOAA issues a geomagnetic-storm watch or warning, a...
Read
There is ordinary tiredness—the heavy-eyed feeling after a late night, a long flight or an exhausting week—and then there is the more puzzling question: Why am I tired all the time? You slee...
Read