Is the Brexit vote successful big data politics or the end of democracy? Why do airlines overbook, and why do banks get it wrong so often? How does big data enable Netflix to forecast a hit, CERN to find the Higgs boson and medics to discover if red wine really is good for you? And how are companies using big data to benefit from smart meters, use advertising that spies on you and develop the gig economy, where workers are managed by the whim of an...

On 14 September 2015, after 50 years of searching, gravitational waves were detected for the first time and astronomy changed forever. Until then, investigation of the universe had depended on electromagnetic radiation: visible light, radio, X-rays and the rest. But gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of space and time—are unrelenting, passing through barriers that stop light dead. At the two 4-kilometre long LIGO observatories in the US,...

Artificial intelligence has long been a mainstay of science fiction, and, increasingly, it feels as if AI is entering our everyday lives, with technology like Apple's Siri now prominent and self-driving cars almost upon us. But what do we actually mean when we talk about AI? Are the sentient machines of 2001 or The Matrix a real possibility, or will real-world artificial intelligence look and feel very different? What has it done for us so far? And...

For centuries, economics was dominated by the idea that we are rational individuals who optimize our own "utility." Then, in the 1970s, psychologists demonstrated that the reality is a lot messier. We don't really know what our utility is, and we care about people other than ourselves. We are susceptible to external nudges. And far from being perfectly rational, we are prone to "cognitive biases" with complex effects on decision-making, such as forgetting...

The Higgs boson is the rock star of fundamental particles, catapulting CERN, the laboratory where it was found, into global spotlight. But what is it, why does it matter, and what exactly is CERN? In the late 1940s, a handful of visionaries were working to steer Europe towards a more peaceful future through science, and CERN, the European particle physics laboratory, was duly born. James Gillies tells the gripping story of particle physics, from the...

When the Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon in 1969, many people imagined Mars would be next. However, NASA's Viking 1, which landed in 1976, was just a robot, and the much-anticipated crewed mission failed to materialize, defeated by a combination of technological and political challenges. Four decades after Viking and almost half a century after Apollo, technology has improved beyond recognition-as has politics. As private ventures like SpaceX...

On September 14, 2015, after fifty years of searching, gravitational waves were detected for the first time, and astronomy changed forever. Up until then, investigation of the universe had depended on electromagnetic radiation: visible light, radio, X-rays, and the rest. But gravitational waves-ripples in the fabric of space and time-are unrelenting, passing through barriers that stop light dead. At the two 2.5 mile long LIGO observatories in the...

Computer technology has improved exponentially over the last fifty years. But the headroom for bigger and better electronic solutions is running out. Our best hope is to engage the power of quantum physics. "Quantum algorithms" had already been written long before hardware was built. These would enable, for example, a quantum computer to exponentially speed up an information search or crack the mathematical trick behind internet security. However,...

Brian Clegg was always fascinated by Isaac Asimov's classic Foundation series of books, in which the future is predicted using sophisticated mathematical modeling of human psychology and behavior. Only much later did he realize that Asimov's "psychohistory" had a real-world equivalent: game theory. Originating in the study of probabilistic gambling games that depend on a random source - the throw of a dice or the toss of a coin - game theory soon...

Entertaining and enlightening, this collection is an insightful guide to how computer science shapes and influences not just our day-to-day lives but also our future. Quantum Computing Computer technology has improved exponentially over the last fifty years, but the headroom for bigger and better electronic solutions is running out. Our best hope is to engage the power of quantum physics. In this approachable introduction, Brian Clegg explains algorithms...