Issue_44

34 articles
  • open mind lucky_HERO

    The Key to Good Luck Is an Open Mind

    Really lucky people may have a specific set of skills that bring chance opportunities their way.
  • goth chicken ayam cemeni hero

    Inside the Goth Chicken: Black Bones, Black Meat, and a Black Heart

    In the historical novel The Black Tulip, written by Alexandre Dumas, an honest and decent Dutch tulip fancier is nearly brought to ruin by his quest to breed a purely black flower. More precisely, his misadventure is due to the dastardly schemes of his neighbor, who, frantic with spite and jealousy over the plants, frames […]
  • everything theory_HERO

    Why Theories of Everything Are Ill-Conceived

    The police don’t often sympathize with speeding drivers, but if you’re a quantum gravity physicist who was distracted by a grand epiphany while driving at night, you might have a better chance. “The Italian policeman asked me politely if I was crazy to drive at that speed,” writes the Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli in his […]
  • face cloud_HERO

    Why We Hear Voices in Random Noise

    You may have once seen a giant face in the clouds. Perhaps it took you aback, amused you, or maybe it prompted an “uncanny valley” kind of sensation—realness, but with a lingering unease. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . In any case, it’s not a modern phenomenon. It’s thought […]
  • Article Recirculation Lead Image

    Why Pascal’s Wager Is Eminently Modern

    Fingers Crossed: Pascal reasoned that life is a sort of “game,” and that our faith in God, or lack-there-of, is our wager as to the ultimate nature of reality.Photograph by Albert / Flickr Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . On the evening of November 23rd, 1654, the brilliant polymath […]
  • Wald_HERO

    How to Be Lucky

    It pays to imagine your life is on a winning streak.
  • bird mobbing_HERO

    Why Birds Love Mobs

    When I tell Katie Sieving, an avian wildlife ecologist at the University of Florida, that it’s probably a stretch to call “mobbing” an act of heroism, she laughs. Mobbing, as the term suggests, involves a mob: It’s when a group of animals band together to harass and drive out a common predator—a behavior already well-known […]
  • dome over manhattan_HERO

    The Secret of Buckminister Fuller’s World-Changing Ideas Was Serendipity

    In his 2016 book, You Belong to the Universe, Jonathon Keats sets out to release Buckminister Fuller from “the zany sci-fi designs that made him notorious, and rescue him from the groupies who have impounded him as a cultish prophet.” Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Keats, a writer […]
  • prague clock_HERO

    The Cosmos’ Fine-Tuning Does Not Imply a Fine-Tuner

    Bad ideas die hard, and then sometimes they come back to life. One such bad idea is the so-called design argument that goes something like this: “Behold the human eye: It is perfectly adapted to seeing the things we need to see, like predators or potential mates. It looks almost like the eye was designed […]
  • Adams_HERO

    The Not-So-Fine Tuning of the Universe

    There’s more than one way to build a universe suitable for life.