Liz Greene

For sheer color, you can’t do much better than a black hole event horizon. It swallows everything without a trace, but it also evaporates. It may contain a wall of fire created by disentangling virtual particles. Unless it’s a fuzzball made of fundamental strings, in which case it has “hair” instead of a firewall.    […]

Systems can surprise us. Out of neurons comes consciousness. Out of cars, traffic jams. Just as interesting as these emergent properties, but less discussed, are submergent properties, in which the causal arrow points down rather than up. The group changes the individual.     Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now .

Issue 24 of the Nautilus print edition combines some of the best content from our issues on Perspective, Communities, and Self. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . This issue includes contributions by: archaeologist and medieval historian Alexander Langlands, Japanese artist Hideki Nakazawa, and psychology professor David P. Barash. This […]

The more we learn about coordinates, the more we understand their tendency to melt into each other. Far-flung bits of space can get entangled. At the tiniest scales, space and time dissolve into a complex foam. In the brain, grid cells that mark our location in space also help us demarcate time. Nautilus Members enjoy […]

Searching has a cost. It takes time and energy, and distracts us from other opportunities. It is also a quickly growing part of modern life.       Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now .

Connection has an exponential, multiplicative power to create complexity. It’s where the meat of the hardest problems—like consciousness—lies. It can also make problems harder than they first seem to be.    Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now .

The November/December 2017 Nautilus print edition combines some of the best content from our issues on The Unspoken and Trust. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . This issue includes contributions by: linguist Julie Sedivy, neuroscience professor and author Stuart Firestein, and anthropologist Dorsa Amir. This issue also features original […]

What interesting stories are out there that involve the self but do not involve people? Complex systems seem to resist the privileged perspective necessary to define a “self.” If nature preaches a deep relativism, is our attachment to the idea of self a human foible?   Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join […]

While we sequence the genetic codes that make our cells unique, we build giant cities that look like cells from space. While we take on more personal responsibility, we divine the outlines of what can only be accomplished through groups. We build new kinds of individuality together with the networks that support them.    Nautilus […]

The importance of perspective in science cannot be understated and yet often is. From the outside, science can seem like a common noun, a smooth and untextured monolith containing the Truth. But science is a method and not a body of knowledge, and it is practiced by fallible humans.    Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free […]