Six stories about bets, luck, and playing the odds.
Nautilus
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Researching Our Martian Heritage
In Nautilus, Tim Folger writes about how scientist are still debating whether organic and inorganic materials found on Martian meteorite ALH84001 contain evidence that life existed on Mars before it existed on Earth. If it did, then life could have spread to Earth from meteorites, which could make human beings ─ and other Earthly life ─ […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The People Who Get Woken Up at 2am When Bob Ballard Finds Something on the Ocean Floor
73-year-old ocean explorer Bob Ballard discovered the wreck of the Titanic 30 years ago, and he hasn’t stopped exploring the ocean floor since. In a recent piece for Popular Mechanics, Ryan D’Agostino profiled Ballard and the research aboard his ship Nautilus (a 211-foot former East German research vessel that carries seventeen crew and thirty-one scientists and operations specialists). But what […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Story
Really Good Shit: A Reading List
Nine longreads about poop.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Nuclear Winter Would Do to the World’s Food Supply
Let me take the most likely one: the nuclear winter case. Say two countries that both have access to nuclear weapons get very angry at each other, and then retaliate, destroying most of the major cities in the opposite country. The vast bulk of humanity would survive, eventually. Say maybe we lost 5 percent of […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Would Happen if Life on Earth Started Over Again?
At Nautilus, science reporter Zach Zorich examines the following question: If the world began again, would life as we know it exist? In science and evolution, this is a discussion of convergence vs. contingency. Scientists like Richard Lenski, an evolutionary biologist at Michigan State University, are conducting experiments in the lab to test out their […]