Brian Gallagher

  • blaming 2016_HERO

    Why We Love to Blame 2016

    You may have noticed it by now: the—I guess I’ll call it an impulse—to anthropomorphize “2016.” It began gradually. First, we objectified it, likening it to a disturbing film, a force of nature, broken hardware. As Slate put it: Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . In trying to wrap […]

  • hitchens_HERO

    Why Christopher Hitchens Was a Hero to Scientists

    The writer had a reverence for science and philosophy, and a conviction that both should be the basis of personal belief and ethics in society.

  • polar bear face_HERO

    If Nature Had a Human Personality, What Would It Be?

    It can be foolish to anthropomorphize the natural world. Perhaps the most frequent version of this failing is when people attribute human thoughts and emotions to animal behavior. Look at that adorable polar bear caressing that sled dog! Clearly that’s an endearing display of affection. It wasn’t, as a Washington Post article titled, “First a […]

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    This Simple Philosophical Puzzle Shows How Difficult It Is to Know Something

    If knowledge isn’t justified true belief, what is it?

  • wilson hall_HERO

    Is an Engineer an Artist?

    One of my favorite moments from the history of science comes from a man whose name may be hard to improve on: Robert Rathburn Wilson. In 1967, in the midst of the space race with the Soviet Union, he became the first director of the National Accelerator Laboratory (later to be renamed, in honor of […]

  • hardest puzzle_HERO

    How to Solve the World’s Hardest Logic Puzzle

    While a doctoral student at Princeton University in 1957, studying under a founder of theoretical computer science, Raymond Smullyan would occasionally visit New York City. On one of these visits, he met a “very charming lady musician” and, on their first date, Smullyan, an incorrigible flirt, proceeded very logically—and sneakily. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free […]

  • dyson gravity_HERO

    Lawrence Krauss Versus Freeman Dyson on Gravitons

    Yesterday, in the New York Review of Books, Freeman Dyson analyzed a trio of recent books on humanity’s future in the larger cosmos. They were How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Space Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight; Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets; […]

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    Is the Nobel Prize Good for Science?

    Yesterday, CNN Money published an article headlined, “Nobel prize winner tells Clinton: Tax fossil fuels.” The winner in question was Joseph Stiglitz, an economist at Columbia University, who received the prize 15 years ago. As you might expect, the Nobel is hardly his only accolade. He’s not only the World Bank’s former chief economist and […]

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    Aristotle at the Gigafactory: Why Physics Is a Philosophy

    On Friday, in Storey County, Nevada, a woman at Tesla’s Gigafactory inauguration hollered, “Beam me up, Elon!” Elon Musk, the electric car company’s chief executive officer, had just taken the stage along with J.B. Straubel, Tesla’s chief technical officer. “Okay, we’re working on that one,” Musk gamely replied before saying: “Alright—welcome everyone to the Gigafactory […]

  • krakauer brain_HERO

    Yes, Your Brain Does Process Information

    Do you know what information is? No worries if you don’t. Clarity on the concept is apparently hard to come by. In a May cover story, New Scientist wondered, “What is information?” The answer: “a mystery bound up with thermodynamics” that “seems to play a part in everything from how machines work to how living […]