The space economy is no longer the sole domain of governments and aerospace and defense companies. The passengers who boarded commercial flights just after World War II didn’t know that air travel would begin to soar over the next decade, nor did the masses who first logged onto the internet in the 1990s realize that computers would one day provide much of their news, entertainment, and social life. And today, few people understand that the space economy—broadly defined as activities in orbit or on other planets that benefit human beings—could soon transform how they live and work.

For someone who wants his own species to go extinct, Les Knight is a remarkably happy-go-lucky human. He has regularly hosted meteor shower parties with rooftop fireworks. He organized a long-running game of nude croquet in his backyard, which, it should be mentioned, is ringed by 20-foot-tall laurel hedges. Even Tucker Carlson proved no match for Mr. Knight’s ebullience.

Millions of workers from developing countries have left their homes to work in the Gulf states, sending back money to support their families and communities. And every major decline in the price of oil comes with massive disruptions to those workers’ lives and the economies of their home countries.

Do intelligent aliens exist somewhere out there in the universe? It is a grand mystery that has captivated humans for generations, fueling ever-more sophisticated searches of the skies for signs of advanced civilizations. But while aliens have taken many forms in our imaginations—from hostile invaders to inscrutable ciphers—we have absolutely no idea what extraterrestrial life-forms might look like, how they would communicate, or even if they exist at all.

Some companies offer tests that rank embryos based on their risk of developing complex diseases such as schizophrenia or heart disease. Are they accurate — or ethical?

George R.R. Martin had a cold—but he was still breathing fire. The creator of the Game of Thrones universe found himself sidelined from the gala premiere of GoT’s new prequel series, House of the Dragon, when he came down with COVID the day before. The day after, however, he rallied to do this joint interview with Ryan J. Condal—his handpicked cocreator for the new prequel series that’s set roughly two centuries before the brutal history viewers saw unfold in the 2011–2019 HBO show.

Late in the evening on Oct. 31, 2020, just days before the U.S. presidential election, Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, sat with a group of associates in his posh Washington, D.C. townhouse. Violence beckoned for the nation, he told them. Bannon claimed that, regardless of the tally, Trump was planning to declare victory shortly after polls closed on Nov. 4.

LEONARDO NOTARBARTOLO STROLLS into the prison visiting room trailing a guard as if the guy were his personal assistant. The other convicts in this eastern Belgian prison turn to look. Notarbartolo nods and smiles faintly, the laugh lines crinkling around his blue eyes. Though he's an inmate and wears the requisite white prisoner jacket, Notarbartolo radiates a sunny Italian charm. A silver Rolex peeks out from under his cuff, and a vertical strip of white soul patch drops down from his lower lip like an exclamation mark.

When anyone mentions Brian Cox, the first question invariably asked is: which Brian Cox are you talking about? Do you mean Prof Brian Cox, physicist, or actor Brian Cox, from Succession? So imagine how annoying it must be for professor Brian and actor Brian Cox! Which got us thinking: what would happen if we invited both Brians to sit down together for a lengthy chat – something they’ve never done before?

In 2009, when the comedian Nathan Fielder first moved to L.A., he learned to tell his managers not to send him to meetings. Why bother? If the point was to charm people into giving him a job, sitting down with them could only hurt his chances. “I’d always say, ‘If people like the stuff I’m making, I’m not going to do anything to heighten that in person,’ ” he recalled. “I’m not going to be very funny in the room.”

TO A PHOTON, the sun is like a crowded nightclub. It’s 27 million degrees inside and packed with excited bodies—helium atoms fusing, nuclei colliding, positrons sneaking off with neutrinos. When the photon heads for the exit, the journey there will take, on average, 100,000 years. (There’s no quick way to jostle past 10 septillion dancers, even if you do move at the speed of light.)

One steamy morning last July, Ana Rausch commandeered a shady corner of a parking lot on the northwest side of Houston. Downing a jumbo iced coffee, she issued brisk orders to a dozen outreach workers toting iPads. Her attention was fixed on a highway underpass nearby, where a handful of people were living in tents and cardboard lean-tos. As a vice president of Houston’s Coalition for the Homeless, Ms. Rausch was there to move them out.

Accretion is one of the most fundamental processes in the cosmos. It is a universal phenomenon triggered by gravity, and the process by which bits of matter accumulate and coalesce with more bits of matter. It works inexorably on all scales to attract and affix smaller things to bigger things, from the tiniest dust grains to supermassive black holes.

Long discussed but rarely used, carbon capture and storage projects — which bury waste CO2 underground — are on the rise globally. Some scientists see the technology as a necessary tool in reducing emissions, but others say it simply perpetuates the burning of fossil fuels.

We’ve supersized our capacity to ship stuff across the seas. As our global supply chains grow, what can we gather from the junk that washes up on shore?

Aviation has long been a pain in the neck for those working to cut human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. It is the pinnacle of a "hard-to-decarbonise" sector: energy-intensive, lacking in immediate technical options to make it lower carbon, and strongly associated with the lifestyles of the richest and most powerful in society.

The Russian army has burned forests and poisoned water supplies, flouting international law. As the UN draws up new guidelines, is it possible to wage an “eco” war?

The numbers are startling. We know roughly how much more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere before we exceed our climate goals—limiting warming to 1.5° to 2° C above preindustrial temperatures. From that, we can figure out how much more fossil fuel we can burn before we emit that much carbon dioxide. But when you compare those numbers with our known fossil fuel reserves, things get jaw-dropping.

How did a Usenet troll and encryption genius become a criminal mastermind? For a man who built an empire in pixels, Paul Le Roux seemed like a digital phantom. After his name surfaced in the press in late 2014, I spent the better part of a year trying to understand him through the same means by which he’d directed his massive pharmacy business: the Internet. Late at night, I would open my laptop and plunge into an online wormhole, searching for clues about who Le Roux had been and what he became.

Climate scientists have been clear that if we want to reduce carbon emissions and slow the pace of global warming, one crucial step is moving from a transportation system run on fossil fuels to one powered by electricity. But it's possible that doing so might neutralize other toxic aspects of the petroleum industry, such as volatile prices and armed conflict.