Issue_10
34 articles-
Osmos, a Physics Game Where It’s Survival of the Fattest
A screenshot from Osmos showing the player’s mote bright blue mote surrounded by smaller blue bubbles, which you can eat, and larger red blobs, which can eat you. In an era when fashion demands thinness, the video game Osmos, in which the goal is attaining ever greater levels of corpulence, stands as a rare exception. […] -
Will Fusion Energy Ever Come Together?
It may well make more sense to improve an already proven technology—fission. -
Steal a Skull, Understand a Genius
Can you match the skulls of Schubert, Haydn, and Beethoven with the musical style of its owner? -
Ingenious: Daniel Wolf Savin
Illuminating the birth of the stars. -
Why Is the Merger Called Mayonnaise Loved—& Hated—so Deeply?
While a strong trend in the culinary arts has been to let individual, natural ingredients shine through, one food has quietly come to dominate the retail market by merging a group of incongruous ingredients together. Mayonnaise, that familiar white goop hiding in your sandwich and coleslaw, is officially the most valuable condiment in the nation. […]
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The Great Bioterror Threat Is Modern Society
E. coli that tested positive for NMD-1 growing in a petri dish. The sample came from a 67-year-old man in India. Nathan Reading via Flickr After the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent anthrax mailings, the United States government started taking the possibility of biological terrorism very seriously. It spent billions of dollars […]
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The Most Massive Object in the Universe—How Was It Created?
The galaxy known prosaically as M87 doesn’t look like much. Unlike beautiful spiral galaxies (including the Milky Way), M87 appears as an orangish blob of stars through telescopes. Its only noticeable feature is the long streamer of gas emanating from the galactic center. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . […]
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Clash of the Tiny—One Pushy Squirrel & the Turf War for LA
A resourceful eastern fox squirrel eating pizzaCourtesy of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County In West Los Angeles, just across the 405 freeway from UCLA, sits a hospital that’s been serving veterans for more than 100 years. Back in 1904, it housed veterans from the Civil and Spanish-American Wars and was called the “Sawtelle Veterans […]
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A Grandfather’s Final Gift Recalls a Different Way of Life
One evening four years ago, photographer Andrea Tese received a phone call from a home-care nurse. Could she come to her grandfather’s house to assess the situation? the nurse asked. Her grandfather had been very ill and had stipulated he did not want to die inside a hospital; he wanted to stay at home. But […]
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The Grand Collisions That Make Snownadoes & Arctic Sea Smoke
Lake-effect snow clearly visible over the Great LakesNASA Last December, State University of New York, Oswego, meteorologist Scott Steiger led an expedition into a snowstorm. The team called themselves OWLeS—the Ontario Winter Lake-effect Systems. Researchers lofted weather balloons and tethered blimps into snowy clouds to gather temperature and humidity data. A trio of flatbed trucks […] -
Biologists Work to Protect a Cathedral of Biology
The isolated Galapagos Islands are a ecological treasure and a key setting in the history of science: Charles Darwin did research there that helped him come to understand biological evolution—though, as detailed in a new Nautilus story by Henry Nicholls, it was observations of plants, rather than the better-known finches, that were most enlightening. One hundred eighty […] -
Where Even Concrete Is Expensive, Artists Must Get Creative
The atmosphere in El Anatsui’s studio is somewhere between a Renaissance artist’s workshop and a recycling plant. The roof is made of thin, uninsulated metal sheets that offer little protection against the hot Nigerian weather. Bags overflowing with bottle tops, bought from local distilleries, are piled all over the floor. Around a dozen young men […] -
The Men Who Planted Trees
In West Africa, a model for worldwide conservation takes root. -
What the Deer Are Telling Us
The ecological fate of our home.
