Brian Gallagher
Should Scientists Use the Phrase “Quantum Supremacy”?
Forget for a moment that you know the meaning of “quantum supremacy,” the idea of a quantum computer outdoing its conventional counterpart. What does the phrase instantly bring to mind? Perhaps the idea that the quantum world, with its electrons, neutrons, and quarks, is, somehow, better than ours—more dazzling and awe-inspiring. Or perhaps it’s the […]
The Cultural Distances Between Us
Mapping the world’s psychological traits.
Australia’s Secret Rescue of Ancient Trees Offers an Insight Into Evolution
When I read that more than a billion animals had lost their lives to bushfires still raging in Australia, I froze, staring at the incomprehensible figure on my screen. A sort of sinking feeling came. Scientists made the estimate from the numbers of animals that have died from previous land-clearing practices. It is dismaying to […]
How Inequality Imperils Cooperation
A game theorist breaks down the effects of inequality.
The 5 Most Popular Nautilus Blog Posts in 2019
Readers’ favorite posts explore a Dutch cure for stress and memories you can inject.
Doc Holliday Is Dead But Tuberculosis Is Still Killing Us
In 2002, David M. Morens, now Senior Scientific Advisor at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, wrote an essay called “At the Deathbed of Consumptive Art.” It featured a photograph he took of Robert Louis Stevenson’s resting place atop Mount Vaea on Upolu, an island in Western Samoa. In 1894, at 44, Stevenson, […]
Rock Solid Evidence for Other Earths
A breakthrough in understanding exoplanets.
The Implant That Can Control Your Brain
This nanoscale device meshes seamlessly with your neurons.
Physicists Say Google’s Quantum Computer Is Still Far From Practical
Google and company claim that their quantum computer can do in 200 seconds what it would take a supercomputer 10,000 years to do.Illustration by plotplot / Shutterstock Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . News on the quantum physics grapevine, Frankfurt Institute theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder tells me, is that […]
The Strange Physics of How Babies Talk
Different arrangements of words can be likened to microstates in statistical mechanics—the total set of ways a system’s constituent particles can be configured.Photo illustration by Khomich Yauheni / Shutterstock Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Like all new parents, I must sound like a kook when I babble along […]