Discoveries

Evidence from the oceans decisively shows that an asteroid strike caused the last mass extinction, argues Pincelli Hull. The cataclysm continues to hold lessons for today.

Ronald Rivest of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology describes the role of computers in voting and what makes elections trustworthy.

Omololu Akin-Ojo of the East African Institute for Fundamental Research discusses his plans to invigorate theoretical physics in Africa, including by focusing on problems related to energy and water that will especially impact the continent.

James P. Allison of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center discusses what initially drew him to immunology as a field and why many scientists used to be skeptical that an immunological strategy for killing cancers would work.

Scarlett Howard describes how and why she taught honeybees math.

Barbara Liskov addresses the challenges that confront computer science.

Virginia Trimble discusses how astronomy has changed over the course of her half-century career.

Wehner discusses the advantages of transmitting qubits rather than bits across a long-distance communication network.

Craig Callender explains why the connection between black holes and thermodynamics is little more than an analogy.