The $2.5 Trillion Reason We Can’t Rely on Batteries to Clean up the Grid

Fluctuating solar and wind power require lots of energy storage, and lithium-ion batteries seem like the obvious choice — but they…

A.I. for Cybersecurity Is a Hot New Thing — and a Dangerous Gamble

Machine learning and artificial intelligence can help guard against cyberattacks, but hackers can foil security algorithms by targeting…

Physicists Hack the Human Visual System to Create “Ghost Images”

A pioneering experiment will extend human vision to invisible wavelengths, say researchers

The Secret Data Collected by Dockless Bikes Is Helping Cities Map Your Movement

Lime and other companies are gathering masses of location-based information that some cities are leveraging to improve…

Why Alibaba Is Betting Big on AI Chips and Quantum Computing

Meet the man behind Alibaba’s gamble on emerging tech

I Attended an Oculus Conference in Virtual Reality, and All I Got Was Eyestrain

Facebook’s VR unit revealed the new Quest headset at its conference for developers, but I couldn’t try it from my couch

A Mathematical Model Captures the Political Impact of Fake News

The mathematical theory of communication — one of science’s finest achievements — provides an objective way to simulate how deliberately…

New York’s Damning Report on Crypto Exchanges Will Be Good for the Industry

Purists won’t like it, but shining a light on the exchanges’ shady practices could trigger big-time growth

A New Way to Make Steel Could Cut 5 Percent of CO₂ Emissions at a Stroke

Boston Metal has developed technology to electrify steelmaking, and a pending funding round will kick-start a large demonstration project.

Why Lithium-Ion May Rule Batteries for a Long Time to Come

Materials scientist Gerd Ceder is overseeing a research effort to extend the capabilities of the dominant form of energy storage, using a new…