Facts So Romantic

Earlier this month there was a rare announcement, promoted widely by the press: a new mammal species had been discovered, the first carnivorous mammal identified in the Americas for 35…

We recently asked you to share your most unlikely stories—the kinds of things that make you scratch your head and think, “What are the chances?” Here’s one of our favorite stories…

On March 28, 2011, the orbiting Swift observatory spotted an extraordinary gamma-ray burst, a bright source of energetic light from a distant galaxy. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are some of…

What do you say when faced with something so unlikely, so improbable, that you simply cannot imagine it ever happening? Perhaps you’ll admit your neighbor was right about who owns the…

Like happy families, every free electron is alike: They all have the same mass, the same electric charge, and the same spin. But inside a solid, various interactions can make electrons…

It’s an odd quirk of the human mind that we tend to think we’re less likely to be affected a particular threat—be it the flu, a car accident, or a flood—than anyone else. Like the…

Last week, we challenged Nautilus readers to name a whole cabinet-full of freaky, weird, and wonderful objects. It was a difficult challenge, but now is the time to end your agonizing wait…

If you imagine the bubonic plague, based on what you learned as a kid, you probably imagine something similar to Pieter Bruegel’s 1562 painting, The Triumph of Death. Dead bodies in piles.…

Folks in the Midwest may have been surprised to see a massive electromagnet being towed up the Mississippi River and driven through the flatlands of Illinois in July. The electromagnet…

Everybody has that one story they tell. That one incredibly unlikely thing that, had it not happened to them, they might not even believe. They found the only other person on a deserted…