The Psychological Challenges of Just Getting to Mars - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus
Though space may be the quintessential I.C.E. environment, Musk appears to be aiming to make trips to Mars—aspirationally scheduled…
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Chaos Makes the Multiverse Unnecessary - Issue 66: Clockwork - Nautilus
Scientists look around the universe and see amazing structure. There are objects and processes of fantastic complexity. Every action…
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Are There Bacteria in Your Brain? - Issue 66: Clockwork - Nautilus
Rosalinda Roberts had gotten used to seeing weird shapes in the brain. Over three decades of looking at brain tissue under an electron…
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The $100 Million Bot Heist - Issue 66: Clockwork - Nautilus
When it comes to using computers to steal money, few can come close to matching the success of Russian hacker Evgeniy Bogachev. The…
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The Present Phase of Stagnation in the Foundations of Physics Is Not Normal - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus
The problem is loads of wrong predictions from theoretical physicists.Photograph by Inga Nielsen / ShutterstockNothing is moving in…
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An Rx for Doctors - Issue 66: Clockwork - Nautilus
Every physician remembers their first bad case. Mine went like this. One morning, a man came into our emergency department with back…
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What’s Wrong with Bananas
Of the important global crops, the banana is the most genetically uniform. A single cluster of nearly identical genotypes, the Cavendish…
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Why Doesn’t Ancient Fiction Talk About Feelings? - Issue 65: In Plain Sight - Nautilus
Reading medieval literature, it’s hard not to be impressed with how much the characters get done—as when we read about King Harold…
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Are Black Holes Actually Dark Energy Stars? - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus
George Chapline believes that the Event Horizon Telescope will offer evidence that black holes are really dark energy stars. NASAWhat…
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The Case for Making Cities Out of Wood - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus
An Alphabet subsidiary is planning to build a futuristic neighborhood, not out of concrete and steel, but wood—and wood is looking…
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Is It Time to Get Rid of Time? - Issue 64: The Unseen - Nautilus
Poets often think of time as a river, a free-flowing stream that carries us from the radiant morning of birth to the golden twilight…
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The Ethics of Consciousness Hunting - Issue 64: The Unseen - Nautilus
When Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist at the University of Western Ontario, asked Scott Routley to imagine playing a game of tennis,…
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How Insulin Helped Create Ant Societies - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus
Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine‘s Abstractions blog.Evolution may have coopted an ancient metabolic mechanism to…
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Lunar Ice: Exciting to Me, But Not to My Characters - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus
The author of The Martian and Artemis argues that the moon’s ice caps (blue) don’t change how he would design his fictional…
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Kolmogorov Complexity and Our Search for Meaning - Issue 63: Horizons - Nautilus
Was it a chance encounter when you met that special someone or was there some deeper reason for it? What about that strange dream…
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This Man Says the Mind Has No Depths - Issue 62: Systems - Nautilus
A whole lot of books on the brain are published these days and you can read yourself into a coma trying to make sense of their various…
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Why Our Intuition About Sea-Level Rise Is Wrong - Issue 62: Systems - Nautilus
Jerry Mitrovica has been overturning accepted wisdom for decades. A solid Earth geophysicist at Harvard, he studies the internal structure…
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Is This Man the Elon Musk of E-Waste? - Issue 62: Systems - Nautilus
Eric Lundgren, the 33-year-old, fedora-wearing CEO of a major electronic waste recycling plant in Los Angeles, could be called both…
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What a Russian Smile Means
When I approach Sofiya Campbell, she regards me and my exuberant smile carefully. It’s only after we shake hands formally that,…
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The Strange Brain of the World’s Greatest Solo Climber - Issue 61: Coordinates - Nautilus
Alex Honnold has his own verb. “To honnold”—usually written as “honnolding”—is to stand in some high, precarious place…
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This Man Memorized a 60,000-Word Poem Using Deep Encoding - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus
Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree,” John Basinger said aloud to himself, as he walked on a treadmill.…
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Why New Antibiotics Are So Hard to Find - Issue 60: Searches - Nautilus
An 86-year-old patient arrives with a grisly foot injury.1 It’s badly infected—not a surprise, given his chronic untreated Type…
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Forget “Earth-Like”—We’ll First Find Aliens on Eyeball Planets - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus
Artist’s conception of a hot Eyeball planet. The permanent day side is sun-baked and dry. The permanent night side is covered with…
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Dear iPhone—It Was Just Physical, and Now It’s Over - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus
I can’t count the number of times I pulled out my phone just for the feeling of unlocking the screen and swiping through applications,…
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How Posture Makes Us Human
The very notion of what in the ancient world defines the human being in contrast to all other living things is simple: upright posture.…
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Why Water Is Weird - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus
It’s striking that water can illustrate and elucidate a martial arts philosophy while also being, to this day, the “least understood…
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Is the Chinese Language a Superstition Machine? - Issue 59: Connections - Nautilus
Every year, more than a billion people around the world celebrate Chinese New Year and engage in a subtle linguistic dance with luck.…
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The Surprising Relativism of the Brain’s GPS - Issue 58: Self - Nautilus
The first pieces of the brain’s “inner GPS” started coming to light in 1970. In the laboratories of University College London,…
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You Can Have Emotions You Don’t Feel
What does it mean to have an emotion? It seems obvious that having one means feeling it. If you’re happy but don’t know it, in…
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I Built a Stable Planetary System with 416 Planets in the Habitable Zone - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus
This system is completely stable—I double-checked with computer simulations. But nature would have a tough time forming this system.…
