2050

Issue 28 of the Nautilus print edition combines some of the best content from our issues on Story and Language. It includes contributions from journalist M.R. O’Connor, neuroscientist Robert Burton, award-winning fiction author Ted Chiang, and linguist David Adger, among others. This issue also features new illustrations by K. Cantner.   

Robert Boyle, a founding member of the Royal Society, was part of an “invisible college” of natural philosophers and physicians who lived by the motto: “nullius in verba,” or, “nobody’s word for it.” This gang of 17th century intellectual rebels questioned the dominant views of the time and stuck by the principle that truth could […]

Over 10 years ago, a digital experiment called Second Life launched, and excitement surged about the idea of interacting in online virtual worlds. Created by Linden Lab, a company founded by Philip Rosedale, the platform gained popularity as people swarmed to participate in a new form of social connection. But, Second Life’s period of rapid […]

When Hurricane Sandy destroyed much of the New York and New Jersey coastlines, in October 2012, the looming threat of climate change abruptly became personal for a large portion of the East Coast—specifically Miranda Massie, a former public-interest lawyer. Seeing her city wasted, she realized that there was nowhere for the public to assemble and […]

Gregory Laughlin has a funny story: While he was working as a planetary scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center in the early 2000s, he was accused in the press of trying to shove Earth into a new orbit, farther from the Sun. “I got into major trouble,” Laughlin remembers in a conversation with Nautilus. […]

Could war games replace the real thing?

Consider this scenario: Suppose astronomers had tracked an asteroid, and calculated that it would hit the Earth in 2080, 65 years from now—not with certainty, but with, say, 10 percent probability. Would we relax, saying that this is a problem that can be set aside for 50 years, since people will by then be richer, […]

Harvard’s David Edwards talks to Nautilus about how ideas can change the world.

Fifty years ago, who knew we’d learn to clone genes and find water on Mars?

MacArthur Fellow Danielle Bassett says learning works best when you don’t overthink it.