Thanks to increasingly efficient and affordable gene sequencing technologies, we can now chart our genetic blueprint in unprecedented detail. But what does each gene do? Of the roughly 20,000 genes ...

When the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 rocketed to fame more than a decade ago, it transformed biotechnology. Faster, cheaper, and safer than previous methods, the tool helped scientists gain insight ...

For most of artificial intelligence’s history, many researchers expected that building truly capable systems would need a long series of scientific breakthroughs: revolutionary algorithms, deep ...

Many years ago, Microsoft committed itself to an exotic, high-risk approach to quantum computing. Now, as the company unveils its first prototype chip, it says its perseverance has paid off. One of ...

"On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced a roadmap for how the company plans to release GPT-5, the long-awaited followup to 2023's GPT-4 AI language model that made huge waves in both tech and ...

Life on Earth relies on molecular building blocks to make DNA and proteins. Scientists have long wondered how prevalent these precursors were at the birth of our solar system. A sample of dust and ...

A popular model of evolution concludes that it was incredibly unlikely for humanity to evolve on Earth, and that extraterrestrial intelligence is vanishingly rare. But as experts on the entangled ...

Inefficient AI models guzzle energy. Then again, so do efficient ones—just for different reasons. As this frenzy to secure reliable baseload power built towards a crescendo, DeepSeek’s R1 came along ...

ET May Look Nothing Like Life on Earth. Scientists Want a Universal Theory of Life to Describe It. Sign up to receive top stories about groundbreaking technologies and visionary thinkers from ...

Dr. Shelly Xuelai Fan is a neuroscientist-turned-science-writer. She's fascinated with research about the brain, AI, longevity, biotech, and especially their intersection. As a digital nomad, she ...

Jason is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State. He studies nearby stars, their ages and activity levels, and most of all their planetary systems. He finds and characterizes new ...

Jennifer is a professor of of geroscience at Penn State. She is a microbiologist who studies biological interactions with earth materials—soil, water, atmospheric gases, and rocks. These interactions ...