Scientific American: Only one thing is worse than the lights not coming on when the switch is flicked–and that’s the lights going out right afterward. The fact that the problem is most often a burned-out lightbulb is testimony to the reliability of what’s sometimes called the world’s largest machine–the U.S. transmission and distribution grid for electricity. But that reliability is tenuous at best and perhaps temporary: the machine needs an update to meet increasing demands for more electricity and to …