IBM’s Watson has the ability to make a diagnosis. Apps can track and monitor patient emergencies. Our phones may soon be our medical advisers. Preventive and diagnostic medicine is on the cusp of an AI revolution that will no doubt save lives.

Prominent clashes — both historical and contemporary — have led to the widely held conclusion that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible. Yet, many scientists practice a traditional faith, having found a way to accommodate both scientific inquiry and religious teaching in their belief system.

The history of computers is a history of competition and collaboration: Innovators have worked together, but also clashed over the place of computers in society and how they should function.

Black holes may hold the key to understanding the most fundamental truths of the universe, but how do you see something that’s, well, black? Astronomers think they have the answer. …

The nature of time is an age-old conundrum for physicists, philosophers, biologists and theologians. The Newtonian picture of time—a kind of cosmic clock that ticks off time in a manner that applies identically to everyone and everything—tightly aligns with our experience. But with special and general relativity, Einstein showed the fallacy inherent in experience.

Black holes are gravitational behemoths that dramatically twist space and time. Recently, they’ve also pointed researchers to a remarkable proposal—that everything we see may be akin to a hologram.