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Science's boldest ideas decoded by the brightest living thinkers and writers. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter: https://nautil.us/newsletter/

12/08/2024

Without flowers, there would be no us. No poetry. No science. No music.

Without flowers, there would be no us.

12/08/2024

The frontal cortex is the most recently evolved part of the human brain. It’s where the sensible mature stuff happens: long-term planning, executive function, impulse control, and emotional regulation. But its neurons are not fully wired up until your mid-20s. Why?

There’s a method to the madness of the teenage brain.

12/08/2024

Scientists have learned smell loss can be a diagnostic tool for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and a host of other brain diseases.

Scientists have learned smell loss can be a diagnostic tool for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

12/07/2024

A warming climate may be causing songbird couples, who typically mate for life, to divorce.

A warming climate may cause more bird couples to break up.

12/07/2024

All crustal rocks—and everything derived from them, including our bones—can trace their origins to magmas.

The deepest extract from the middle layer of the Earth offers a wonderland of insights.

12/07/2024

"We’re actually sitting right in between two voids. It’s something that is not commonly understood, but we’re actually literally at the edge of a cosmic cliff."

Physicist Miguel Aragon explains what makes the milky way special.

One question for Miguel Aragon, a computational physicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

12/06/2024

The holidays are the perfect time to explore new ideas and perspectives. Gift yourself a Nautilus subscription and dive into stories that illuminate the mysteries of science, culture, and the human experience.

Subscribe today: https://bit.ly/3OIUroo

12/06/2024

Harvard and MIT humanist chaplain Greg M. Epstein examines his 3 greatest revelations while writing his latest book: Tech Agnostic.

Harvard and MIT humanist chaplain Greg M. Epstein on his 3 greatest revelations while writing Tech Agnostic.

12/06/2024

In water a sound wave travels four and a half times faster, and loses less energy, than in air. It moves farther and faster and carries information better.

How sound rules life underwater:

Amorina Kingdon’s 3 greatest revelations while writing Sing Like Fish.

12/06/2024

Can cryogenically freezing coral stop time long enough to save them?

Watch musician, producer, and coral reef activist Stranger Cat explore how scientists are refining ways to cryogenically freeze coral larvae in an effort to preserve populations that are under threat from warming waters as she reads "Frozen Reefs" by journalist CD Davidson-Hiers.

Spotify: https://bit.ly/3VtfuPz
YouTube: https://bit.ly/4g01Knz

12/05/2024

How can we make sure we can tell the difference between memories of things that happened from memories of things we simply imagined?

Changing the narrative on false memories might be surprisingly simple.

12/05/2024

Archaeologists have long plundered Native American remains without consent or care for descendant communities. Anthropologist Jennifer Raff is on a mission to make archaeology more ethical.

"I can’t atone for the abuses of the past, but I can try to make the field better."

Jennifer Raff is on a mission to rewrite the history of human origins in the Americas.

12/05/2024

Insights and intuitions from physics are unexpectedly leading to breakthroughs in mathematics.

“Physics and math are starting to become one again, like they were in Newton and Gauss’ day.”

The secret sauce is the real world.

12/05/2024

The shift in thinking about ships as populations of people more or less susceptible to infection, not just disease in a bottle, could allow historians and researchers to explore previously unconsidered nuances of historical pathogen spread.

New evidence suggests it was slower than we thought.

12/05/2024

Not all human fears are instinctual and hardwired—we need to learn what to be afraid of.

How evolution designed your fear:

The universal grip of Stephen King’s personal terrors.

12/04/2024

Neurochemical mind control is not just the stuff of science fiction. Mind control is real, and it can be observed in nature. Parasites do it all the time.

How parasites manipulate the behavior of their hosts.

12/04/2024

Humans can withstand temperatures up to 35 degrees Centigrade (or 95 degrees Fahrenheit) without suffering heat strokes or heart attacks. But humidity makes high temperatures much more dangerous.

The new estimate for how much heat we can tolerate makes rising global temperatures even more alarming.

12/04/2024

More than 45 years after they first launched, the Voyager probes are now NASA’s longest-lived mission and the most distant human-made objects from the Earth. In a few years we'll lose contact with them forever.

Earth's most distant space probes prepare for their inevitable long night.

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Videos

Ask a male sea turtle if too many females is a problem and he'd probably say no. But ask an ecologist and they'd say absolutely. We know the temperature of the sand incubating a sea turtle’s egg will determine the hatchling’s sex. The problem: warmer sands are exclusively producing female turtles. And because sea turtles reach sexual maturity much later in life, the unbalanced ratio of females to males we see today was a product of the environment decades ago. Scientists are now in a race against time to correct sea turtles' sex problem before it reaches a tipping point.

Male seahorses aren’t the only animals that put a great deal of effort into raising their young, but they are the only ones that become pregnant.⁠ This explains the extreme lengths to which male seahorses are willing to go in raising their young, including brawling with other males.

Trailblazing big-wave surfer Maya Gabeira has conquered record-breaking waves, feats that display human courage amidst nature’s might. Across the world, Lorenzo Bertelli is a competitive motorsport driver and Head of Corporate Social Responsibility of the Prada Group and Executive Director, Patron of the UN Ocean Decade. As the leader at the helm of sustainability and innovation, he thinks deeply about what it means for humans to coexist in a more intentional way with the natural world. Nautilus brought them both together for a one-of-a-kind conversation about the delicate balance between thrill-seeking and sustainability. Watch the entire discussion now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqIEehF8wuo "The worst thing that can happen for a big wave surfer is you catch the wave of your life and then you're in front of the ride the whole time."

Meet Katherine Anderson, a PhD candidate in the Whitney Lab at the City College of New York. Her research focuses on how different social settings can change bird songs and behavior. Think of it like avian code-switching! 🐦

Volcanologist Tamsin Mather stumbled into a career in volcanology. But when she looked back at her own history while she was writing her new book, she realized she had loved volcanoes for longer than she thought. https://nautil.us/what-volcanoes-tell-us-762257/?utm_source=fb-naut&utm_medium=organic-social

1,800 miles off the coast of Peru lies an underwater mountain range, teeming with life beyond our imagination. Millennia-old corals, watermelon-sized urchins, fish with fins adapted for walking, and more among over 100 species thought to be new to science. The underwater mountains of the Nazca and Salas y Gómez ridges are isolated by a vast low-oxygen zone, the depths of the Atacama Trench, and the powerful Humboldt Current—an isolation that allowed evolution to follow its own trajectory. Almost half the species encountered there exist only there. 🎥 via @schmidtocean

Cassandra Jenkins' favorite planets

To celebrate Cassandra Jenkins' new space-inspired album release today, we caught up with her and asked her to rank her top 3 favorite planets. Spoiler alert: Earth ranks high on the list. Listen to My Light, My Destroyer here: https://spoti.fi/4bOHHWE

Just past the main gate of San Diego Zoo Safari Park, a hyacinth macaw blasts Daft Punk on his boombox. His name is Sampson and he likes to dance. Hearing is a dominant sense for many species, and zoo animals constantly hear unfamiliar sounds: construction noise, vehicles, human speech, and the sounds of animal neighbors. Researchers are now looking into ways to give animals in captivity agency over their sound environment. For Sampson, who loves to dance and entertain, this means being a DJ. Now similar technology is being developed for other animals to mimic natural sounds, or provide quiet, silent spaces when desired. 🎥 RebKlein/YouTube

Groundbreaking research in Africa has revealed a remarkably simple and natural solution to human-elephant conflict: bees. These tiny insects have the astonishing ability to terrify elephants, animals millions of times their size. Studies led by Lucy King, a zoologist from Oxford and researcher with Save The Elephants, have shown that even the sound of a bee's buzz can send elephants into a panic. Upon hearing the hum, elephants flee, kicking up dust, shaking their heads, and trumpeting warnings to others. In 2017, researchers tested this concept by installing beehive fences along the Pungwe River's well-traveled elephant crossing points. The results were impressive, with the fences preventing 95 percent of elephant crossings. Head to Nautilus to learn more about how elephants are big scaredy cats around bees: https://nautil.us/elephants-are-total-scaredy-cats-around-bees-423763/?utm_source=fb-naut&utm_medium=organic-social YT/ SaveTheElephants #elephants #africa #bees #animals

When Finch met Finch: A Love Story by Sarah and Andrew ❤️ Back in reality, researchers Kevin Oh and Alexander Badyaev followed thousands of finches over six years to map the social network the birds relied on during breeding season. They found that females rarely left their neighborhoods to interact with birds in other neighborhoods. But how much males moved around from one neighborhood to the next depended on their coloring. Those with plenty of red coloration—which females tend to prefer as mating partners—generally remained put, just like females. But drabber colored males were more likely to socialize across many neighborhoods. The question was why? The most colorful males did well no matter what neighborhood they were in. Drab males, however, had greater reproductive success if they tried their luck all around town—essentially, this allowed them to find just the spot where their relative coloration was greatest and therefore most likely to score them a mate. They learned to play the field, restructuring social networks in a way that served their purposes best. Learn more at Nautilus: https://nautil.us/the-astonishing-ways-animals-use-social-networks-589010/?utm_source=ig-naut&utm_medium=organic-social #love #bird #birds #finches #SocialNetwork

Grooming is a vital part of social bonding for macaque monkeys ❤️ On the island of Cayo Santiago, about a mile off the coast of eastern Puerto Rico, Hurricane Maria devastated everything in its path, including the social networks of the monkeys living there. At the time, very little was known about how animals adjusted their social dynamics after full-scale natural catastrophes. Animal behaviorist and author, Lee Alan Dugatkin, studied the fascinating way macaques worked together to reestablish their society following this catastrophe, and deep analysis on monkey grooming behavior and bonding was a big part of his research. Learn more at Nautilus: https://nautil.us/a-hurricane-strengthened-monkey-friendships-589078/?utm_source=fb-naut&utm_medium=organic-social #monkey #grooming #animals #cute #animallover #primates

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Nautilus is a different kind of science media company. We are science, philosophy, and culture connected, offering a new perspective on human uniqueness and our universe—all beautifully illustrated. Each month in our magazine (and every day online at Nautil.us), we explore topics from various scientific disciplines, pairing award-winning journalists with illustrators to create features that are unlike any other science journalism—fascinating, inspired, and innovative. Nautilus publishes online and print long-form features, as well as a blog, Facts So Romantic, a news service, Three Sentence Science, and more. Beautiful, intriguing, and full of wonder—Nautilus is what science journalism should be.