What are the special challenges, pitfalls, opportunities and rare triumphs of seeking and synthesizing the essence of someone whose passion—quantum physics, number theory, nucleic acids, atomic species, computational design, gravitational phenomena—is so thoroughly foreign to the concerns of everyday life?

What happens when a black hole a billion times more massive than our sun powers a star-like object? It’s a quasar of a question. These massive and extremely remote celestial …

Can conscious self-awareness be coded in an algorithm? According to distinguished computer scientist Lenore Blum and Turing Award Laureate Manuel Blum the answer is “yes,” and they join Brian Greene …

What is color? It seems like a simple question at first, but when you think about it, the reality of what we’re seeing is a pretty complex situation. Our human eyes sift through a small piece of the vast electromagnetic spectrum and translate it into every color of the rainbow.

Known for his work in television, theater, and film, Alan Alda is also a passionate advocate of science. Through his years as host of Scientific American Frontiers, his founding of …

Powerful new genetic tools allow scientists to alter the DNA of any organism—with tests on human embryos already underway. Even more ambitious, synthetic biologists on the verge of creating the genetic material for a living organism from scratch are setting their long-term sites on fashioning a fully synthetic human genome.