In "Biological War," Annie Jacobsen imagines society collapsing from a man-made plague--part of a wave of such prophecies. But what do we miss when we try to predict the future? In the fall of 1989, a select group of Soviet scientists was summoned to Obolensk, a secluded municipality on Moscow's periphery, and gathered at what appeared to be an insane asylum to discuss a pioneering technique for mass murder. If someone had been observing the institutional activity from space--a distinctly non-theoretical possibility--they might have seen a shuffle of patients roaming the grounds or playing volleyball in their pajamas. These were actors, hired to play the disturbed as a cover story for something even more disturbing. The eight-story glass building at the center of the complex, which had putatively been devoted to vaccine manufacturing, was in fact a highly classified defense facility. Its remit was called, or "biological preparations"--what one participant later described as "the most ambitious Soviet arms program since the development of the hydrogen bomb." The most recent experiments there had at last demonstrated the viability of a weapon that could wipe out entire enemy populations without leaving a scratch on their infrastructure. It was a pathogen genetically engineered to spread within hours, to kill within days, and to resist all existing treatment.

One of the most celebrated physicists of our time, Stephen Hawking, died at the age of 76. The British scientist was known for his pioneering work on black holes and relativity, and has authored several popular books. In 2017, Cambridge University made Hawking's PhD thesis, which he completed in 1966, available to the public. "By making my PhD thesis Open Access, I hope to inspire people around the world to look up at the stars and not down at their feet; to wonder about our place in the universe and to try and make sense of the cosmos," Hawking said in a statement at that time. "Anyone, anywhere in the world should have free, unhindered access to not just my research, but to the research of every great and enquiring mind across the spectrum of human understanding."