How Big Can Life Get?

In an excerpt from his new book, “Sleeping Beauties,” the musician and writer revisits the brilliant discoveries by astronomer Vera Rubin

Without different anatomical proportions, a scaled-up body would collapse under its own weight.

Some scientists say the answers may lie in thermodynamics and other mathematical principles

“How about that?”

A bolt may ignite seeming genius, but is more likely to deliver agony

And how lugworms tweak the rules by pooping upside down