Rose eveleth
19 articles-
Time Trial: See If You Can Clock These Time-Warped GIFs
When Eadweard Muybridge captured the movement of a galloping horse in individual frames in 1878, he managed to settle a long-running debate over how that animal runs—specifically, whether there was any moment when it had all four feet off the ground. His pioneering stop-motion photographs showed how slowing the world down provided a powerful way […] -
The Curse of the Unlucky Mummy
When science and fear collide, a supernatural story thrives. -
How World of Warcraft Might Help Head Off the Next Pandemic
Gamers are giving scientists insights into how people react to a plague. -
How Does Flying Feel on the Other Side of the Cockpit Door?
Turbulence in the wing vortex produced by an airplaneNASA Langley Research Center (NASA-LaRC) via Wikipedia In many of the times we encounter turbulence in our lives, it is preceded by a calmly worded warning from above. “Uh, folks, we may hit a few bumps,” a pilot announces over the plane’s PA system—or something to that […] -
How Graphic Design Can Make Flying Just a Little Bit Safer
The cause of aviation safety has had a terrible week. An Air Algérie flight crashed yesterday in Mali, reportedly killing all 116 on board. The day before, a TransAsia plane went down on the Taiwanese island of Penghu, leading to the deaths of at least 48 people. And, most notoriously, Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was […]
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Sparkly Mints May Help Explain Puzzling “Earthquake Lights”
Agriculture inspector Jim Conacher photographed these earthquake lights over Tagish Lake, in Canada’s Yukon Territory, in 1972Jim Conacher For centuries, people have been reporting mysterious lights along the ground and in the sky soon before an earthquake hits. But it wasn’t until 1966 that there was some solid evidence of the lights, when one man […]
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Steal a Skull, Understand a Genius
Can you match the skulls of Schubert, Haydn, and Beethoven with the musical style of its owner?
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Your Genetic Privacy Is Probably a Lost Cause
Any cup you sip from could provide a sample bearing your DNA. dohtoor via Shutterstock Almost everywhere you go, you leave a bit of yourself behind—a hair, a fingernail clipping, a bit of skin, a few skin cells from your lips on a drinking cup. For a long time, that trace of you was little […]
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What Would You Put in a Science Time Capsule?
It’s 2014: Sixty-one years since the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. Four hundred seventy one years since Copernicus published the heliocentric model of the universe. And one year since the Higgs Boson was discovered. In 100 years, how will we look back on today’s science?We’re building a scientific time capsule—a collection of objects […]
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Cracking the Social Code
New approaches are helping autistic people understand “neurotypicals”—and vice versa.
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The Youngest Code-Makers
We learn as kids that knowledge is power—secret knowledge even more so. -
How the Law Protects the Idea of a Famous Person
A woman walks in to the room. She is wearing a white dress and has a mole over her bright red lips. She could be anybody, but you might have instantly guessed she was Marilyn Monroe. For every famous person, there is a handful of traits that we use to recognize them. Caricaturists and comedians […] -
The Underdogs of Fame
This issue of Nautilus deals with fame: what it is, where it resides, and why. But we all know that fame is a fickle beast, smiling upon a fortunate few and forsaking others who are more deserving. So, tell us, who should be more famous than they are? Who’s the most underrated scientist, thinker, artist? […] -
The Curse of Being a Sole Survivor
On January 26, 1972, a Yugoslavian passenger plane flying 33,000 feet above then-Czechoslovakia exploded, ripped apart, and plummeted into the ground, killing 27 of the 28 passengers and crew. Vesna Vulovic, a flight attendant, was the only one to survive the crash. Vulovic holds the Guinness World Record for surviving the highest fall without a […] -
Tell Us Your Astonishingly Unlikely Story
Everybody has that one story they tell. That one incredibly unlikely thing that, had it not happened to them, they might not even believe. They found the only other person on a deserted mountain in China, and it was a long-lost friend from high school. They escaped being struck by lightning only because they dropped […]
