Nautilus Magazine

Why did Charles Darwin call orchids an "abominable mystery"? Watch Joey Santore of Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't read "Why Is Everything An Orchid?" by Sofia Quaglia and learn why the orchid's wild variety fascinated Darwin. Spotify: https://bit.ly/4gmoxdN YouTube: https://bit.ly/4gMJrlS

How an artist rediscovered a lost pigment of blue sacred to his ancestors. “I was able to arrive at this method … the closest to the pre-Hispanic way of how to do it.”

From Nautilus, a great science newsletter I get via email every day: A Crystal Forest By Elena Kazamia A scientist’s failed experiment yields an amazing photo When chemist Robert Hamers cracked open the crucible he had used to heat a brew of metal crystals, he was greeted with a surprise: an enchanted forest in deep shades of green. The cobalt-containing crystals he had been growing for two weeks in an oven had vined their way upward from the base in a stunningly familiar pattern and shade to match. “I was completely awestruck,” says the chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. It looked as if tiny elm trees, surrounded by shrubs and hedges, had been skillfully drawn inside the egg-shaped cup. “What amazed me was, you look at it and you see a trunk is growing down from the bottom, and there are branches, and they are pretty well resolved, and there’s kind of this little fuzz, where the leaves would be.” You can read the rest of the story here and see the amazing crystal forest photo... https://lnkd.in/gw4aNKkz #Science #chemistry #Crystals #Nautilus

Living with a Papua New Guinea tribe in the ’80s presented anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse with a question for today: How do we determine what our family is, and could changing our definition of family change the world?

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

When Federica Gigante, an art historian and specialist in Islamic scientific instruments at the University of Cambridge, recently examined an astrolabe, sunlight streaming through a nearby window caught some markings on one side. Later she determined these were words written by different hands in Hebrew, as well as Latin-style numbers. The original engravings on the instrument—already clear—were in Arabic, she says. “That’s the really interesting side of this,” says Gigante. “This type of astronomical knowledge was shared between different populations in a way that many people don’t realize today.” Gigante recently published her findings on the Verona astrolabe—which translates as “star taker” in Greek—in the historical journal Nuncius. Read more: https://bit.ly/3ZmHrKh

Daniel Levitin is a neuroscientist whose 2006 book This Is Your Brain on Music, first got the public thinking about the biological machinery behind music. His new book, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine, explores the way that music can be physically healing. Nautilus recently sat down with him to discuss his discoveries, the brain's default mode, and music therapy. Read the full conversation: https://bit.ly/4ggUV0W

In the name of sexual selection, male bowerbirds create art. These little interior designers arrange curated objects including flowers, berries, leaves, and even human items like bottlecaps and nails to create elaborate love shacks. https://bit.ly/3CZ1Ygg

We know sharks hunt by spotting silhouettes at the surface of the water. So researchers tested if LED lights on a dummy seal would deter sharks from feasting. The results: no attacks, follows, or jumps from hungry Great Whites.

Science can make you a better shopper. It's true! Find out how with our new free ebook "The Shopping Mind," just in time for Black Friday: https://bit.ly/4fRsZRa