The Hive

27 articles
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    Astronomy

    Why We’ll Have Evidence of Aliens—If They Exist—By 2035

    The search for alien technology is about to get much more efficient. I’ve bet a cup of coffee to any and all that by 2035 we’ll have evidence of E.T. To many of my colleagues, that sounds like a losing proposition. For more than a half-century, a small coterie of scientists has been pursuing the […]

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    Health

    Obsessed With Blastocysts

    The discovery of stem cells—made possible by fundamental research in microscopy—sprouted a new field of medicine.Science Philanthropy Alliance / YouTube For the last three decades, Janet Rossant has been obsessed with the puzzle of how you got here. How did a five-day old blastocyst turn into a five-fingered baby? She found part of the answer […]

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    Arts

    How Science Makes “Rick and Morty” Great

    “Rick and Morty” explores both profound or wacky what-ifs, and more humanistic concerns, like dealing with a divorce or failing high-school. Adult Swim / Turner Broadcasting System The season finale of “Rick and Morty,” the Internet Movie Database’s fourth most-popular TV show of all-time, runs tonight. What started as a graphic parody of Back to […]

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    Zoology

    When It’s Good to Be Antisocial

    It turns out that, even in a highly coordinated hive, antisocial individuals persist.“Wanderer above the sea of fog,” by Caspar David Friedrich (1817) Bees are emblems of social complexity. Their honeycombs—intricate lattices dripping with food—house bustling hive members carrying out carefully orchestrated duties like defending against predators and coordinating resource collection. Much of our own […]

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    Physics

    Are Gravitational Wave Detections Becoming Normal?

     When I heard the news, I emailed my editor with my immediate reaction: “Bummer.” Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . For the fourth time now, humans have directly detected the collision of two black holes. The violent merger occurred over 2 billion years ago, between black holes with 25 […]

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    Health

    Yes, You Get Wiser with Age

    Aging gets a bad rap. But disease, decline and discomfort is far from the whole story. Dilip Jeste, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at UC San Diego and director of the UCSD Center for Healthy Aging, is challenging us to take another look.In conversation with Nautilus, Jeste points out that some things get better with […]