Gallery: WIRED's Required Science Reading From 2016

Five hauntings from the other side of technology.

Don’t buy a loved one something you wouldn’t want for yourself. These are the must-haves that tech enthusiasts have on their wish lists this year.

Seven of 16 planetary vital signs are in their most extreme state ever recorded, and El Niño is here to make matters even worse.

The DNA inside our cells isn’t just a series of instructions, but something far more dynamic. Like scientists, AI models don't yet have the data to properly decode it.

Optogenetics revolutionized neuroscience, but its origins come from an entirely brainless organism—an alga.

The new open-source model speaks the language of DNA and can help researchers understand the effects of any changes on gene activity and health.

In a world of AI Overviews, Wikipedia usage declines. But the real loss may be far more existential than website traffic.

The Webb telescope sees tiny red dots everywhere. Astronomers can’t agree on what they are, but some believe they may be enormous stars with black holes inside.

Henri Kagan and Kensō Soai designed chemical reactions producing only one of the two mirror-image forms of a molecule—an important finding for the synthesis of pharmaceuticals and other biological substances.

This week on Uncanny Valley, we go behind the scenes of our Nathan Fielder cover story, unpack tech billionaires’ generous promises, and discuss the suspicious letters sent to US election offices.

Amid a sea of AI writing slop, a new stamp for “organic literature” will help readers to pick out books authored by real, corn-fed, free-range humans.