Animals
Explainer: What is animal domestication?
The difference between a dog and a wolf isn’t looks or genes or even behavior. It’s the relationship these animals have with people.
Featured Articles in this Issue
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Cover Story
Can a robot ever become your friend?
Social robots can teach, help and keep people company. What would it take for machines to form real friendships with people? And do we even want that?
Explainer
Technically Fiction
Tech
Could Star Trek replicators exist?
Experts break down what’s possible and what’s not for this classic science-fiction invention.
Profile
Tech
Magic, cooking and droids inspire this roboticist
Dennis Hong and his team design human-like robots that can help solve problems and also entertain.
Features
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Can a robot ever become your friend?
Social robots can teach, help and keep people company. What would it take for machines to form real friendships with people? And do we even want that?
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Carvings on Australia’s boab trees reveal a people’s lost history
Archaeologists and an Aboriginal family are working together to find and document a First Nations group’s lost ties to the land.
More Stories from the September 1, 2023 issue
- Fossils
This ancient bird rocked a head like a T. rex
This bird from 120 million years ago had a head like a dinosaur and a body more like today’s birds.
- Environment
Older diesel school buses linked to more student absences
Schools that replaced or upgraded old diesel school buses increased student attendance rates, new research shows.
- Earth
One collision could have formed the moon and started plate tectonics
A hypothetical planet slamming into Earth 4.5 billion years ago might have set subduction into motion.
- Brain
Scientists mapped every nerve cell in this insect brain
Researchers have built a “connectivity map” of all the nerve cells in the larval fruit fly brain and how they link together.
- Space
Experiment: A puzzling parallax helps stargazers
In this project, we explore how perspective, or parallax, can be used to measure the distances to objects such as stars.
- Computing
A single chip like this could transmit a world’s worth of data
The internet has a big environmental footprint. But this new type of tech could help reduce the climate impact of computing.
