A Roman temple in Ankara, Turkey PE Forsberg / Alamy Stock Photo Latin inscriptions from the ancient world can tell us about Roman emperors’ decrees and enslaved people’s thoughts – if we can read them. Now an artificial intelligence tool is helping historians reconstruct the often fragmentary texts. It can even accurately predict when and where…
Angier (Hugh Jackman) in the film version of The Prestige AJ Pics/Alamy The PrestigeChristopher Priest (Tor Essentials, available in the UK and the US) The Prestige is probably best known from its 2006 film adaptation, directed by Christopher Nolan, fresh from the success of Batman Begins. The book it is based on, however, has devoted fans, and is often…
Matthias Oberholzer/Unsplash One of the not-funny ironies of the 21st century has been that everything we thought was social media is actually just mass media, except it’s terrible and broken. Luckily, journalists and creators are finally figuring out how to leave the old media models behind and enter the future. The term “mass media” became…
Ines Papert in Kyrgystan, Ines Papert Most people would find a 1200-metre wall of ice on a mountain peak intimidating. But for decorated ice climber Ines Papert, scaling the peak of Kyzyl Asker – a remote mountain on the border between China and Kyrgyzstan – was a dream. It took three attempts before she and…
Alex Garland’s 2015 film Ex Machina and Sierra Greer’s Annie Bot (pictured below) follow a long tradition of female robots Maximum Film/Alamy This year’s Arthur C. Clarke award for the year’s best science fiction novel was awarded last month to Sierra Greer’s Annie Bot. Over the course of the novel, Annie, a sentient sex robot…
Vegetation like that in the Chapada das Mesas National Park, Brazil, is no longer removing as much CO₂ from the atmosphere Pulsar Imagens/Alamy Hot and wet weather in 2024 – the hottest, wettest year on record – caused ecosystems on land to emit nearly as much carbon dioxide as they took out of the atmosphere,…
Water is being depleted at sites around the world Intensive groundwater pumping, evaporation and melting due to rising global temperatures have shifted a growing amount of freshwater from the continents to the oceans. This threatens water availability for most of the world’s population and adds to sea level rise. Jay Famiglietti at Arizona State University…
Scorching Heat Dome Grips Eastern U.S., with No Relief in Sight Tens of millions of people are already under heat alerts, and the worst is yet to come By Meghan Bartels edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier HeatRisk forecast for July 28, 2025. The NWS HeatRisk is an experimental color-numeric-based index that provides a forecast risk…
The company we keep could affect our health Rob Wilkinson/Alamy Many of us have people in our lives who bring more angst than joy. But rather than these individuals just dragging us down, they could actually be speeding up the rate at which we age. Psychologists have long known that strong social ties shape our…
Aliens are visiting our solar system. Not little green men, sadly, but natural alien objects—cosmic bodies such as comets and asteroids born elsewhere in the galaxy that zip by the sun as they drift through the Milky Way. They’re not so much visiting as just passing through. Though these objects were speculated to exist for…
