Issue_25
30 articles-
A Fijian Village Adapts Tradition to Try to Save Its Ailing Reefs
The day that conservation biologist Joshua Drew, his two students, and I arrive in the Fijian village of Nagigi, the wind is blowing so hard that the coconut palms are bent sideways. “Trade winds,” we are told. And, “El Nino.” The villagers here also know that climate change is affecting the weather, but their more […] -
Water & Vice: Producing Intoxicants in an Era of Extreme Drought
California is thirsty. The state is in its fourth year of a drought that is especially severe, by any measure. For instance, an April 1 snowpack measurement, a key indicator of surface-water supplies, was lower than any year on record, going back at least to 1950. Dry statistics aside, you can grasp the scope of […] -
The Rube Goldberg Machine That Mastered Keynesian Economics
While researching my soon-to-be-released biography on John Horton Conway, an iconoclastic and very influential mathematician at Princeton, I organized a research trip to his native England. We visited with Conway’s elder sister, Joan, in Liverpool, and convened a reunion at his alma mater, Cambridge. We met there with a few of his “sum chums,” his co-authors […] -
This Early Computer Was Based on a Urinal Flush Mechanism
John Horton Conway, a Fellow of the Royal Society who hails from Princeton via Cambridge, England, is notorious for many things—perhaps most for his promiscuous curiosity and his lifelong love affair with playing all manner of games. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . He’s also celebrated for his Conway […] -
Chimps and the Zen of Falling Water
There is a waterfall in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park. Maybe 12 feet high, it’s fairly modestly sized, though even a modest waterfall is quite a magical thing. And it’s here that chimpanzees come to dance. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . You can watch a video online, narrated by […]
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Why a Post-Nuclear World Would Look Nothing Like “Mad Max”
Mad Max: Fury Road envisions an embarrassing, nightmarish future. Worldwide droughts have driven humanity to nuclear war over water, destroying modern civilization, and disfiguring the earth into a planet-spanning Sahara. Decrepit old goons control the last remaining pockets of groundwater and arable land; essentially, the movie is one drawn-out, violent chase scene through a sterile […]
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The Last Drop of Water in Broken Hill
In the Australian outback, the future of drought has come early.
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Can New Research & Old Traditions Save Fiji From Ecological Collapse?
I look out the windshield of the taxi and see that the road through the tropical forest ends, but our journey does not. We continue on a rutted dirt road, then ford a small stream, and eventually emerge from the thick vegetation at the edge of a vast and empty beach. Here, we wait. A […]
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The Tragedy of Iran’s Great Salt Lake
This classic Facts So Romantic post originally ran in August, 2014. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . The last time my cousin Houman traveled to Lake Urmia was 11 years ago. He and four of his friends piled into his car and drove for roughly 12 hours, snaking west […]
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Watch Water Levitate, Flow Up, & Swirl the Wrong Way in the Other Hemisphere
The conventional wisdom is all wrong. Countless parents and teachers have gotten it twisted. The BBC and PBS aired bogus explanations. Even textbooks have botched the story. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . The Earth’s rotation, and the Coriolis effect that results, do not cause water to circle the […]
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The Ocean in Motion
How Earth’s seas get around. -
The Chemistry and Psychology of Turning Water Into Wine
Penn and Teller famously skewered the bottled water craze on their myth-busting Showtime series, Bullshit, setting up a hidden-camera sting operation in a fancy New York restaurant. A fake “water sommelier” stopped at each table, offering diners a special selection of high-end bottled water at $7 a pop. The catch: All the bottles were identical, […] -
How Water, Paradoxically, Creates the Land We Walk On
It’s no secret that water shapes the world around us. Rivers etch great canyons into the Earth’s surface, while glaciers reorganize the topography of entire mountain ranges. But water’s influence on the landscape runs much deeper than this: Water explains why we have land in the first place. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log […] -
Why Discovering Martians Could Be Disappointing
There are two kinds of extraterrestrial life with very different implications. -
The Beckoning of the Ice Worlds
We’ve been looking for life on Earth-like planets. Will Europa teach us better?