Almost 50 years ago, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn designed TCP/IP, a set of rules enabling computers to connect and communicate with each other. It led to the creation of a vast global network: the internet. TCP/IP is how almost the entirety of the internet still sends and receives information. Vint Cerf is now 80 and serves as the chief internet evangelist and a vice president at Google. He is also the chairman of the Marconi Society, a group that promotes digital equity. Alok Jha, The Economist’s...

Same-sex attraction is found in many animals—but, like all animal behaviours, it can be complicated and difficult to study. The underlying biological mechanisms, however, are of great interest for understanding human health, genetics and evolution. Researchers know there is no such thing as a “gay gene”; in fact genetics can explain less than a third of the variation in people’s self-reported same-sex behaviour. Non-genetic factors, therefore, play an enormous role. Scientists can’t agree on...

The Biden administration is expected to declassify some information gathered on the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, hoping to end a three-year battle over whether covid-19 came from a seafood market or a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Some scientists say they have strong evidence for a market origin—although many are far from convinced. Will this mystery ever be solved?  Natasha Loder, The Economist’s health editor, asks James Wood, an epidemiologist at the University of Cambridge, how to trace...

Fish are a vital source of protein and other nutrients for humans, as well as an important part of the ocean's ecology. But overfishing has become a crisis. It is estimated that 90 percent of the world’s fisheries are being fished either at or over their capacity, while some species have been driven to extinction. Can an innovative farming method, which grows fish on dry land, solve the problem? Abby Bertics, The Economist’s science correspondent, investigates. Tackling overfishing is a...

Many of the world’s most important urban areas are on coastlines or rivers, putting them at risk of rising sea levels. Rapid urbanisation and climate change are conspiring to make this threat more urgent. How can cities adapt to avoid catastrophe?  The Economist’s Benjamin Sutherland explores how well new flood defences work in Venice and why Venetians are pondering raising the city’s foundations. Alizée Jean-Baptiste, The Economist’s Asia podcast producer, visits Jakarta, to investigate why...

Recent years have seen a boom in biometric security systems—identification measures based on a person’s individual biology—from unlocking smartphones, to automating border controls. As this technology becomes more prevalent, some cybersecurity researchers are worried about how secure biometric data is—and the risk of spoofs. If generative AI becomes so powerful and easy-to-use that deepfake audio and video could hack into our security systems, what can be done?  Bruce Schneier, a security...

Clinical trials are the gold standard for testing the safety and efficacy of a treatment or drug, and a keystone in modern medicine. But their grinding timelines and skyrocketing price tags are hindering development and, ultimately, costing lives. Natasha Loder, The Economist’s health editor, asks Sir Martin Landray, the boss of Protas, a clinical-trial organisation, what can be learned from his pioneering RECOVERY covid-19 trial. Euan Ashley, a cardiologist at Stanford University, explains...

Antimicrobial resistance killed over a million people in 2019. That figure is expected to rise to ten million by 2050. Antibiotics remain vital to modern medicine, but this hidden pandemic of drug-resistant superbugs is driving scientists to explore possible alternatives. One type of therapy in particular is attracting serious scientific interest: bacteriophages.  Phages are viruses that can destroy bacteria. In the 1920s, phage therapies were used widely against infections, but much of the...

The use of drones in the war in Ukraine has been increasing. Unmanned vehicles capture battlefield images, relay co-ordinates, and strike targets in Ukraine and even Russia. Whether purpose-built military devices or off-the-shelf civilian technology, the drones are having an outsized impact. How are they influencing battles? And what do they mean for the future of warfare? Oliver Carroll, our correspondent in Ukraine, explores the purpose and effectiveness of drones in the war. Ulrike Franke...

The vast majority of the energy used on Earth comes from fossil fuels. But as governments enact climate-friendly policies, electric grids need to be decarbonised, by using renewable-energy sources. And much more electricity needs to be generated too—to power transport, homes and heavy industry. Despite its urgency, redesigning electric grids is both a political and technological challenge. How can such a revolution happen? Host Kenneth Cukier explores the mechanics of how electric grids work...

Since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT almost six months ago, little else has occupied the minds of technologists. Generative artificial intelligence—capable of producing media like text, images and audio in response to prompts—seems to be improving every day, with many technology companies developing and releasing their own competing systems. As the AI revolution accelerates, the technology is being used in ever more creative ways, companies are discovering its potential, causing unease among...

Twenty years ago, the Human Genome Project was completed. It unveiled a mostly complete sequence of the 3 billion pairs of building blocks that make up the code within every set of human chromosomes. These are the instructions that create humans. Almost all of human biology research uses the Human Genome Project’s findings in some way, from understanding why some people are more likely to develop diseases than others, to uncovering the secrets of our ancestors and evolution. But for genomics...

This week, the European Space Agency is expected to launch a spacecraft towards Jupiter and three of its icy moons—Ganymede, Europa and Callisto. The JUICE mission will carry ten instruments to the outer solar system and will hunt for water, a heat source and organic material—the ingredients that scientists think are needed for life. It is hoped the results that come from JUICE, and a similar NASA mission, Europa Clipper, will give us scientists a clearer view of whether life exists beyond...

As they stare up into the night sky, astronomers have long wondered whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. For decades, the hunt for extraterrestrial life has focused on Mars, Venus and even on the various moons of our solar system. But in 1995, that search entered a new phase, when Didier Queloz and Michel Mayor found the first clear evidence of a planet orbiting another star: 51 Pegasi b. Since then, more than 5,000 exoplanets have been found. This week, Alok Jha asks Nobel laureate...

Imagine a power source that produces hardly any waste and is carbon-free. That’s the tantalising promise of controlled nuclear fusion, which physicists have been trying to achieve for 70 years. It is a simulacrum of the process that powers the sun, colliding atomic nuclei of various sorts to release huge amounts of energy.  Fusion research was once the provenance of governments and national laboratories, but now private companies are getting in on the act. Dozens of them are exploring...

OpenAI's ChatGPT, an advanced chatbot, has taken the world by storm, amassing over 100 million monthly active users and exhibiting unprecedented capabilities. From crafting essays and fiction to designing websites and writing code, you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s little it can’t do.  Now it’s had an upgrade. GPT-4 has even more incredible abilities, it can take in photos as an input, and deliver smoother, more natural writing to the user. But it also hallucinates, throws up false...

A new class of drugs for weight loss have become available and are showing promising results. That’s welcome news, as a recent report estimates that half of the world’s population is expected to be overweight or obese by 2035. Obesity is a disease which can lead to serious health complications–and most previous attempts at treating it have proven futile. Can the new weight-loss drugs turn the tide against this global threat? Louise Baur, president of the World Obesity Federation crunches the...

The Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing was held this week in London. It was the first such meeting since 2018, when a Chinese researcher announced that he had created the world’s first genetically edited babies—a move that was roundly condemned at the time. Host Alok Jha and Natasha Loder, The Economist’s health editor, report from the conference to explore the exciting future—and knotty challenges—of the world that gene-editing therapies could create. Robin Lovell-Badge, a...

There is a worrying amount of fraud in medical research. As many as one in 50 research papers may be unreliable because of fabrication, plagiarism or serious errors. Fabricated data can influence the guidelines which doctors use to treat patients. Misguided clinical guidelines could cause serious illness and death in patients. Fraudulent studies can also influence further research programmes—recent findings suggest that manipulated images may have resulted in scientists wasting time and money...

Over the past few years, hundreds of rugby players have launched class-action lawsuits against the sport’s governing bodies, accusing them of failing to do enough to protect players from head injuries. They say that repeated blows to the head, sustained through years of playing rugby, or other sports, have caused neurodegenerative conditions like dementia, motor neurone and Parkinson’s diseases. But can scientific evidence prove a link between contact sports and these brain conditions?  Alix...

Over the past 18 months, the largest-ever recorded avian influenza outbreak has decimated bird populations around the world. But recently bird flu has spread to mammals. Last week, Peru reported the deaths of 585 sea lions. If the virus has mutated to enable mammal-to-mammal transmission, that could be an intermediate step towards human-to-human transmission. How worrying is this threat? Susan Davies, CEO of the Scottish Seabird Centre, describes how the H5N1 avian flu has affected...

Engineers have spent decades trying to create functional humanoid robots, which look and act like humans. But these machines, which combine complex mechanics with generative artificial intelligence models, like ChatGPT, are finally coming-of-age. Are they good enough to sustain a human-like conversation, though? Host Alok Jha travels to Cornwall to meet Ameca, a robot made by Engineered Arts. Will Jackson, the company’s boss, explains how the technology behind Ameca works and the advantages...

Alcohol is the most widely used drug in the world, but it is also the cause of three million deaths each year and has been linked to many other long-term illnesses. In addition, the loss of productivity due to hangovers has an outsized impact on some economies. People still want to have a good time, though, and innovators are dreaming up ways to enjoy the effects of alcohol, without the costs. Jason Hosken, our producer, visits Brixton Brewery to speak to co-founders Jez Galaun and Xochitl...

Three firms are racing to become the first private company to land on the Moon. The potential commercial opportunities range from mining lunar resources to establishing a human base with communications infrastructure. But the commercialisation of the Moon raises tricky questions about who owns Earth’s closest neighbour. Steve Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, explains what he hopes his company’s missions will achieve, while Ian Jones of Goonhilly Earth Station describes how the blossoming...

Digital fakery, from the latest generation of deepfakes to lower-tech trickery, threatens to erode trust in societies and can prevent justice from being served. But how can technology be used to both detect deepfakes and authenticate real images? Patrick Traynor, a professor at the University of Florida, explains a novel method to expose audio generated by artificial intelligence. Ilke Demir of Intel Labs demonstrates how to spot visual fakery by analysing colour changes in the face. Plus,...