This is the most exciting time to be alive in history. Discovery and innovation are reshaping the world around us, and Popular Science makes even the most complex ideas entertaining and accessible. By taking an upbeat, solutions-oriented look at today's most audacious science and revolutionary technology, we forecast what tomorrow will be like. We deliver the future now.
THE SMARTEST MOVE
your brain is just a pile of wet, fatty goop
how missles got smart
IQ ≠ intelligence
whistleblow while you work
let me Google that for you
credit where it’s overdue
size isn’t everything
your password stinks
could a monkey troupe really write Shakespeare?
all you have to do is call
POPULAR SCIENCE
how big is humanity’s knowledge?
just add a dash of data
BUILDING A BABY-BRAINED AI • A psychologist's work inspires autonomous carmakers to think young.
YOUR BRAIN, FROM CRADLE TO ROCKING CHAIR
CODE THIS DRONE
CHECK YOUR HEAD
GLEAMING THE CUBOIDS
NOT FOR CONTROL FREAKS
GET THE PARTY STARTED
HIT THE MAT
BECOME A DIY SPY
MUSIC TEACHERS
SOME MORE NOTES
ROBOT WITHOUT A CAUSE
INTELLIGENCE
THE GRAY AREA OF BRAIN TRAINING • CAN EXERCISING THE MIND IMPROVE OUR ABILITIES, OR IS IT JUST ANOTHER SELF-IMPROVEMENT FANTASY?
WORK IT • SOME TECHNIQUES CAN BOOST CERTAIN COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS.
FORTIFY IT • THE BEST WAY TO KEEP YOUR NOGGIN IN SHAPE IS TO TAKE CARE OF THE REST OF YOU.
Of Beasts and Brainpower • LOTS OF CRITTERS HAVE SKILLS THAT OUTMATCH HUMANS.
SURPRISING SKILL SETS
LAST YEAR THERE WERE 8,1 64 FAKE NEWS STO RIES • You may have noticed: It’s a weird time for facts. On one hand, despite the hand-wringing over our post-truth world, facts do still exist. On the other, it’s getting really hard to dredge them from the sewers of misinformation, propaganda, and fake news.1 Whether it’s virus-laden painkillers, 3 million illegal votes cast in the 2016 presidential election, or a new children’s toy called My First Vape, phony dispatches are clogging the internet.
ANATOMY OF A FACT-CHECK • An excerpt of the author’s claim-by-claim analysis of a climate denial “news” story (full check at popsci.com/FakeNews).
NEW NASA DATA SHOWS POLAR ICE HAS NOT RECEDED SINCE 1979 • GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISTS CLAIMED ARCTIC ICE CAP WOULD BE GONE BY NOW, BUT SEA ICE IS 5% ABOVE 35 YEAR AVERAGE
THE LIE DETECTOR • How good are AI fact-checkers at spotting fake news? Our writer put one, called Claim-Buster, to the test. Here’s how it performed:
TUNE YOUR BS DETECTOR • We can’t rely on algorithms to flag every falsehood, and there will never be enough journalists to keep up with the deluge. Here’s how you can spot fake news.
TURN SIGNALS • Changing lanes is simple for human drivers. Not so for autonomous cars. Instead of gray matter and muscle memory, self-driving vehicles make decisions using programming, artificial intelligence, and onboard perception systems such as lasers, cameras, and radar. We asked four companies—drive.ai, a startup out of Stanford; nuTonomy, born from MIT; Uber; and Waymo—what their cars consider when deciding whether to veer left.
NEITHER HERE NOR THERE • INSIDE THE LAB WHERE COMPUTING MAKES A QUANTUM LEAP
MAKE THE GRADE • Since the turn of the 20th century, psychologists have tried to pin down what it means to be smart. More than 100 years later, they’re still arguing about the best methods to spot intelligence. But that squishiness hasn’t stopped organizations from NASA to Mensa from adapting psych assessments into some of the trickiest exams ever to meet the No. 2 pencil....