All posts tagged: 21st

The most important quantum advance of the 21st century

The most important quantum advance of the 21st century

Published by Jenni Sidey

Since the dawn of the quantum era, perhaps no question has loomed larger in the minds of theoretical physicists than just what, exactly, the nature of reality is. Are quantum objects real, with well-defined positions and momenta, even in the absence of an observation or measurement to determine them? Out of all the ways to interpret quantum mechanics — from parallel universes to a collapsing wavefunction to theories of hidden variables — we still don’t have any evidence that favors one interpretation over another. All we’ve been able to do, even as of 2026, is rule out certain deterministic interpretations that cannot be consistent with the experiments we’ve actually performed. Nevertheless, despite how slow progress has been in uncovering the full nature of our quantum reality, humanity has taken many important steps since the founding of quantum mechanics. We’ve uncovered the deeper science of quantum field theory, understanding that not just the particles that compose reality but that even the underlying fields have a quantum nature. Bell’s theorem and Bell’s inequality have opened up whole …

Tesla Just Killed the Most Important Car of the 21st Century

Tesla Just Killed the Most Important Car of the 21st Century

Published by José Betancourt

Before Elon Musk, most electric vehicles seemed less like an alternative to gasoline than an argument in its favor. The sad state of affairs for EVs for many years was that they were slow, impractical, and largely enticing only if you lived with copious guilt over your carbon emissions. Then Tesla came out with the Tesla Model S. The speedy, high-tech sedan didn’t just leave other EVs in the dust; it could compete with the likes of BMW and Mercedes-Benz. “EVs went from ‘eating your vegetables’ to getting you super-car performance in a vehicle that’s luxurious and quiet,” Jake Fisher, the senior director of auto testing at Consumer Reports, told me. The Model S proved something that’s now easy to take for granted: EVs can work, and ordinary people might actually want one. A year after the Model S’s 2012 debut, Musk personally drove one coast-to-coast to prove that it was just as capable as a gas car. Now the Model S is going away. During Tesla’s earnings call yesterday, Musk announced that his company …

The Best Spy Movies of the 21st Century

The Best Spy Movies of the 21st Century

Published by Jenni Sidey

Times are tough for the thriller fan who likes to see spies practice, well, spycraft. More than ever, the best spy movies are actually TV shows—grounded small-screen gems like Slow Horses, The Agency, or The Night Manager. Meanwhile, secret agents at the movies seem to have taken to heart Ian Fleming’s original characterization of James Bond as a “blunt instrument”: they mostly excel at blowing stuff up. In reality, a successful spy’s body count is, by definition, zero. Instead, what’s at stake are secrets—and, more often than not, the agent’s own sanity. It’s hard to say what caused the classic espionage thriller to go the way of the buddy-cop movie—shrinking attention spans? The current mess of a geopolitical situation? Tony Gilroy being too busy with Andor?—but here we are. Not to worry, though. A few filmmakers are carrying the torch for realistic tradecraft, first lit by Martin Ritt’s 1965 adaptation of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, well into the 21st century. Here are ten of my favorite “they don’t make ’em like …

How – and why – we chose the best 21 ideas of the 21st century

How – and why – we chose the best 21 ideas of the 21st century

Published by skeptic

What separates a good idea from a bad one? It isn’t always easy to tell. Take the invention of vaccination, for example. Drawing pus from a woman infected with cowpox and injecting it into an 8-year-old boy seems utterly reckless, but in doing so, 18th-century physician Edward Jenner found a way to fight the deadly scourge of smallpox. It is only with hindsight that we can see Jenner was on to something: a principle that has now saved millions of lives. That is why, a quarter of the way into this century, we have decided to look back and celebrate the ideas that have really mattered in the past 25 years – the ones that are already transforming the way we behave, think or understand what’s around us. In coming up with our list of the 21 best ideas of the 21st century, there was plenty of heated debate within the editorial team. Our first hurdle was the unexpectedly puzzling question of whether the first quarter of the 21st century concluded at the start of …

The 5 worst ideas of the 21st century – and how they went wrong

The 5 worst ideas of the 21st century – and how they went wrong

Published by skeptic

These are our selections for the worst fumbles of the 21st century: ideas that were great, but got twisted or misused and didn’t deliver on their original promise. Bitcoin For years, it was a constant refrain in the tech world: “Put it on the blockchain.” Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that was invented in 2008 and went mainstream in the late 2010s, brought blockchain technology into the public eye, and it has exploded ever since. On the face of it, bitcoin seems like a good idea – it is a currency that isn’t overseen by any government or banking regulator, but rather by a public ledger: the blockchain, in which all transactions are recorded. Copies of the ledger are distributed on a network of computers around the world, kept secure by a combination of sophisticated cryptography and the fact that each copy of the ledger can be checked against all the others to ensure its accuracy. This article is part of our special issue on the 21 best ideas of the 21st century. Browse the full line-up …