Issue_79
21 articles-
Biodiversity Alters Strategies of Bacterial Evolution
Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.In the closing paragraph of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin urged readers to “contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth.” Those plants, birds, insects […] -
How Inequality Imperils Cooperation
A game theorist breaks down the effects of inequality. -
Lessons for a Young Scientist
A masterclass on what science needs now. -
The 5 Most Popular Nautilus Blog Posts in 2019
Readers’ favorite posts explore a Dutch cure for stress and memories you can inject. -
The 5 Most Popular Nautilus Feature Articles in 2019
Readers’ favorite articles explore tree smarts and the end of the gene as we know it.
-
Philosophy Is a Public Service
I design thought experiments to provoke dialogue about who and what we want to become.
-
This Test for Machine Consciousness Has an Audience Problem
The audience problem highlights a longstanding worry about robot consciousness—that outward behavior, however sophisticated, would never be enough to prove that the lights are on, so to speak. A well-designed machine could always hypothetically fake it.Photograph by Paul Biryukov / Shutterstock Someday, humanity might build conscious machines—machines that not only seem to think and feel, […]
-
The Eccentric Seer of Supernovas
Fritz Zwicky decoded how exploding stars fill space with cosmic rays.
-
Where Is My Mind?
The rise and fall of the claustrum epitomizes the hunt for consciousness in the brain. -
Memories Can Be Injected and Survive Amputation and Metamorphosis
Experiments on snails and other creatures raise questions about how memories are really stored. -
If We Believe in Dark Matter, Why Not Extraterrestrial Life?
Avi Loeb has a lot of thoughts about aliens and scientific prejudice. -
Is the Law of Conservation of Energy Cancelled?
Maybe energy can be created and destroyed, or maybe the notion doesn’t quite make sense. -
Why the Laws of Physics Are Inevitable
Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.Compared to the unsolved mysteries of the universe, far less gets said about one of the most profound facts to have crystallized in physics over the past half-century: To an astonishing degree, nature is the way it is because it couldn’t be any different. “There’s just no freedom […]
