Stories by W. Wayt Gibbs

COVID might be fought efficiently with fewer shutdowns by restricting activities only in a particular area with a population up to 200,000 when its case rate rises above a chosen threshold.  

“Baking is applied microbiology,” according to the book Modernist Bread. During pandemic lockdowns, many people started baking their own bread. Scientific American contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs talks about Modernist Bread, for which he was a writer and editor.

Contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs spoke with Arthur Caplan, head of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine’s division of medical ethics, about some of the ethical issues that researchers have to consider in testing and distributing vaccines against COVID-19.

Guest host W. Wayt Gibbs talks with Jason Wright, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, about what’s known as the Fermi paradox: In a universe of trillions of planets, where is everybody?

Pathologists are starting to get a closer look at the damage that COVID-19 does to the body by carefully examining the internal organs of people who have died from the novel coronavirus.

In mice, a test for lung cancer involves nanoprobes that recognize tumors and send reporter molecules into the urine for simple analysis.

Well, it’s probably there because the odds on its presence have gone way up in the past 40 years. But such parasites are still much more of a health problem for whales and dolphins than they are for us.

Tigers and lions at the Bronx Zoo have tested positive for the virus, and studies show that house cats—but apparently not dogs—can become infected.

Coronavirus research requires high-containment labs. Journalist Elisabeth Eaves talks with Scientific American contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs about her article “The Risks of Building Too Many Bio Labs,” a joint project of the New Yorker and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.  

Scientific American contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs continues to report on the coronavirus outbreak from his home in Kirkland, Wash., site of the first U.S. cases. In this installment, he talks with researchers about what their models show for the future of the pandemic and on research to create tests to see who has developed immunity.

Scientific American contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs reports from the original U.S. epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak: Kirkland, Wash. In this installment of our ongoing series, he talks with researchers about the properties of the virus and why it spreads so quickly.

Scientific American contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs reports from the U.S. epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak: Kirkland, Wash. In this installment of our ongoing series, he talks with researchers about the efforts to create vaccines and treatments and the challenges the outbreak poses to cancer patients and others who are immunocompromised.

Scientific American contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs reports from the U.S. epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak: Kirkland, Wash. In this first installment of an ongoing series, he looks at why children seem to weather this disease better than adults and the complicated issue of shuttering schools.

A few bold physicists—some backed by billionaires—are exploring faster, cheaper roads to the ultimate source of clean energy

A free Web service combats illegal fishing by exposing the movements of commercial vessels to public view 

A global effort to develop the most comprehensive picture of the world's health started with the curiosity of a young boy in Niger

In an interview with Scientific American the philanthropist talks about the statistics that inspire him most

Astronomers have discovered two supermassive black holes locked in a whirling dance at the center of the nearest quasar galaxy

Scientific American has collected a delectable set of articles on the origin and future of food, and our love and hate relationship with it

Atomic clocks are shrinking to microchip size, heading for space—and approaching the limits of useful precision

A small group of futurists and engineers have begun building a mechanical clock meant to tick through 1,000 decades

Some biologists extrapolate findings from rodent studies of epigenetic inheritance to humans, but others remain skeptical

Environmentalists are bugging rainforests with discarded smartphones to catch poachers and illegal loggers