Adaptation

An astrophysicist sits down with Nautilus to discuss cosmology and culture.

Improving the lives of disabled people is more than an engineering project.

A new theory sheds light on the emergence of life’s complexity.

The staunch atheist and essayist Christopher Hitchens once said that “the most overrated of the virtues is faith.” It’s a reasonable conclusion if you believe, as the astrophysicist Carl Sagan did, that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”1 To believe something without evidence—or have faith—is, in their view, something to avoid (and, when called for, to […]

Commander Carmel Johnston gives Chief Science Officer Christiane Heinicke a hand.Photograph by Sheyna Gifford Space is no place to be alone. On Earth, it may be uncomfortable, even oppressive—but by itself, being alone isn’t life-threatening. A person alone in space, however, is definitively lost: dead, or about to be.  On simulated Mars—the slopes of a […]

In May 2015, an official vote was held by the Oxford University Student Union about clothing policy. It was over whether to keep “subfusc,” a traditional uniform dating back to the mid-seventeenth century—comprised of a dark suit or skirt, black shoes, white shirt, and a white or black bow tie or ribbon—mandatory for exams. The […]

Technology hasn’t diminished the social quality of listening to music.

This time the test is Earth’s own ecological future.

Robert Paine showed us the surprising importance of predators.

Queen ants fight dirty. With their powerful jaws, they clamp down on ­each other, ripping through exoskeleton and vital flesh—a fight to the death. The spoils of victory include the deceased’s entire colony.  The queen with the broader head and stronger jaws is most likely to win. When we think of animal weapons—antlers, tusks, horns, […]