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The first statewide carbon tax in the United States almost certainly isn't going to happen. Washington votes by mail, so it ain’t over yet, but the No side of Initiative 1631 has just over 56 percent, with more than two thirds of the votes counted. It doesn’t look good. LEARN MORE The WIRED Guide to […]

Since 2016, IBM has offered online access to a quantum computer. Anyone can log in and execute commands on a 5-qubit or 14-qubit machine located in Yorktown Heights, New York, from the comfort of their own home. This month, I finally tried it—nervously. I did not know what I was doing and worried I might […]

Remember all those classics you devoured in comp-lit class? Neither do we. Research shows that we retain an embarrassingly small sliver of what we read. In an effort to help college students boost that percentage, a team made up of a designer, a psychologist, and a behavioral economist at Australia’s RMIT University recently introduced a […]

There are so many real-world physics problems involved in running. Lots of physicists have been inspired, for instance, by the crazy-fast speeds of Usain Bolt. Just take a look at this paper, "On the performance of Usain Bolt in the 100 m sprint" (European Journal of Physics), in which the authors examine the motion of […]

Everyone has probably played with dominoes. At some point in your childhood, chances are that you tried this game: Line up a bunch of dominoes in a row and then knock one over. Soon the rest of the dominoes topple in a chain reaction. I'm not sure why this is fun, but it is. But […]

For the Inuit of Labrador in Canada, climate disaster has already arrived. These indigenous people form an intense bond with their land, hunting for food and fur. “People like to go out on the land to feel good,” says Noah Nochasak in the documentary Lament for the Land. “If they can’t go out on the […]

WIRED ICON Marc Benioff, founder, chair, and co-CEO of Salesforce NOMINATES Boyan Slat, founder of the Ocean Cleanup As a boy tinkerer in the Netherlands, Boyan Slat made zip lines and, at age 14, set a Guinness World Record for launching the most water rockets—213 of them—at once. You know, typical kid stuff. In hindsight, […]

The birth of Lulu and Nana—the first two babies believed to be born with Crispr-edited DNA—has triggered soul-searching in China as tech innovators, scientific researchers, and government bureaucrats reconcile conflicting values. At first Chinese media celebrated Jiankui He, the scientist who last week announced he had edited the girls' DNA. Some pundits even speculated whether […]

Take a pencil, stretch out your arm, and let go. We all know that the pencil will fall. OK, but what about dropping a bowling ball? Is that the same thing? No wait! How about a watermelon dropped off a tall building? Why would you do that? I would do it to see it splat. […]

OK, I'm a little excited for the new Aquaman movie. Sure, I've been let down by DC movies before—but we also got Wonder Woman (which was awesome). Also, as a kid my mom made an Aquaman costume for me. She said it was the best costume for me since I had blonde hair (and so […]