Asking scientists about silence is sort of like asking writers about the spaces between words. Most of us pay close attention to our… | Continue reading
Several years ago, my father died as he had done most things throughout his life: without preparation and without consulting anyone.… | Continue reading
Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine‘s Abstractions blog.Evolution may have coopted an ancient metabolic mechanism to… | Continue reading
In 2012, I ran a trip sampling the nautilus populations along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef explicitly to see if nautiluses living… | Continue reading
The history of Artificial Intelligence,” said my computer science professor on the first day of class, “is a history of failure.”… | Continue reading
The author of The Martian and Artemis argues that the moon’s ice caps (blue) don’t change how he would design his fictional… | Continue reading
I teach one of the world’s most popular MOOCs (massive online open courses), “Learning How to Learn,” with neuroscientist Terrence… | Continue reading
Suddenly, black was everywhere. It caked the flesh of miners and ironworkers; it streaked the walls and windows of industrial towns;… | Continue reading
Errol Morris feels that Thomas Kuhn saved him from a career he was not suited for—by having him thrown out of Princeton. In 1972,… | Continue reading
Have you ever been happy?” My girlfriend asked me that question, after work over drinks at some shiny Manhattan bar, after another… | Continue reading
If the rumors are true, 20th Century Fox will release a remake of the 1966 science-fiction film Fantastic Voyage in the next year… | Continue reading
The first time I saw a free-living giraffe was in Tanzania’s Arusha National Park, where I was astounded by a yellow-and-brown head… | Continue reading
Ever since Frederick Winslow Taylor timed the exact number of seconds that Bethlehem Steel workers took to push shovels into a load… | Continue reading
Alessandro Baricco paints a lively portrait of the modern-age barbarian in his 2014 book, The Barbarians. He initially frames the… | Continue reading
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.Cells build an elegant, symmetrical structure. How they do it is intriguing… | Continue reading
Not long ago I diagnosed myself with the recently identified condition of sidewalk rage. It’s most pronounced when it comes to a… | Continue reading
On April 11, 2012, Zeddie Little appeared on Good Morning America, wearing the radiant, slightly perplexed smile of one enjoying instant… | Continue reading
In one way, Jackson Pollock’s mathematics was ahead of its time. When the reclusive artist poured paint from cans onto vast canvases… | Continue reading
What is a dog? Many people often think of dogs as kennel club creations. The purebred dog is man’s best friend, not the street dog.… | Continue reading
The latest cover of The Disconnect, a new online magazine, features an animated digital fingerprint that is unique to you, the reader.… | Continue reading
Early one Saturday morning in Las Vegas, I sat down at a Texas Hold ‘em poker table with seven or eight other men, all middle-aged.… | Continue reading
It’s not that James Williams, a doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute’s Digital Ethics Lab (motto: “Every Bit… | Continue reading
Even if you make it past the interplanetary radiation, you’re still confronted with any number of hazards, and they don’t stop… | Continue reading
The latest cover of The Disconnect, a new online magazine, features an animated digital fingerprint that is unique to you, the reader.… | Continue reading
When Kathleen Morrison stepped onto the stage to present her research on the effects of stress on the brains of mothers and infants,… | Continue reading
In the run-up to NATO’s 2011 intervention in Libya, a Dutch radio hacker named Huub (@fmcnl) tweeted to the United States military… | Continue reading
Galileo Galilei is best known for his novel way of looking at Earth’s place in the solar system and his consequent problems with… | Continue reading
In The Zoomable Universe, Scharf puts the notion of scale—in biology and physics—center-stage. “The start of your journey through… | Continue reading
In a famous story from ancient Chinese philosophy, Butcher Ding has been called upon to play his part in a traditional religious ceremony.… | Continue reading
Several years ago, my father died as he had done most things throughout his life: without preparation and without consulting anyone.… | Continue reading
Dmitry Malioutov can’t say much about what he built. As a research scientist at IBM, Malioutov spends part of his time building… | Continue reading
People often ask me whether human-level artificial intelligence will eventually become conscious. My response is: Do you want it to… | Continue reading
Few experiences on the road are more perplexing than phantom traffic jams. Most of us have experienced one: The vehicle ahead of you… | Continue reading
Early in the morning on Sept. 11, 1995, the cruise liner the Queen Elizabeth 2, on its way from Southampton to New York, was being… | Continue reading
How remarkable, I thought, that science is fulfilling, in some sense, that ancient aspiration to decipher some measure of our personal… | Continue reading
It began like any normal pregame in the woods. Naked, alone, hungover, a sweaty sleeping bag in the back of a dusty pickup truck,… | Continue reading
Many people cheat on taxes—no mystery there. But many people don’t, even if they wouldn’t be caught—now, that’s weird. Or… | Continue reading
Artist Sayaka Ganz converts consumer castoffs into meaningful work. She makes sculptures entirely of second-hand plastics that are… | Continue reading
Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine‘s Abstractions blog.Researchers explore a loophole that extracts useful energy… | Continue reading
David Pizarro and his colleagues argue that emotional expression functions as a signal to others that you’ve incorporated feelings… | Continue reading
Some dark, clear nights, when the blazing stars cast shadows down on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, the astronomer Olivier Guyon steps away from… | Continue reading
English adapts to the needs of people speaking it more than it shapes those people’s ideas or ideals.Photograph by kimberrywood… | Continue reading
“How many kingdoms know us not!”—Blaise Pascal, Thoughts (1670) One summer’s day in 1950, the great Italian-American physicist… | Continue reading
Was it a chance encounter when you met that special someone or was there some deeper reason for it? What about that strange dream… | Continue reading
The $10,000 First Prize will include the opportunity to publish the winning article in Nautilus, a leading online and print magazine… | Continue reading
After a few years of driving, you are able to hold conversations while navigating a busy city. How is this possible without unconscious… | Continue reading
The size of things in our universe runs all the way from the tiny 10-19 meter scale that characterizes quark interactions, to the… | Continue reading
A whole lot of books on the brain are published these days and you can read yourself into a coma trying to make sense of their various… | Continue reading