This graphic from the California Water Atlas (1979) represents the water flows of major rivers in California. The yellow figures represent the actual flow measured in a single year, with the peak typically occurring in spring. The corresponding blue figures represent the estimated flow of that river in the absence of dams or other human modifications. California […]

Last month, the standard measure for mass was redefined. Yoked to a material object housed in a Parisian vault since 01889, the kilogram will now be defined by abstract concepts in nature. CONTEXT FROM THE ARCHIVES: Alex Mensing, “How Much Does a Kilogram Weigh?” (02011)  

Harvard geneticist George Church, who is leading efforts to de-extinct the woolly mammoth, explores a cave in Siberia. Photo by Brendan Hall. There will be three long flights across 15 time zones before I sleep in a bed, and we still won’t be there. Our destination is vastly closer to where we start than the path […]

10 years ago, Joe Keane placed a Long Bet that the Large Hadron Collider will destroy Earth by 02018. He was challenged by Nick Damiano. The stakes were $1,000. If Damiano won, the winnings would go to Save the Children. If Keane won, the world would end, and the winnings would (theoretically) go to. . .   Read More

John Brockman. For the last twenty years, literary agent John Brockman has presented the members of his online salon Edge with a question that elicits discussion about some of the biggest intellectual and scientific issues of our time.(Previous prompts include “What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?” or “What should we be worried about?”). The essay responses — in […]

Earlier this month, the bristlecone pine, one of the oldest and most isolated organisms on Earth, found itself in unfamiliar territory: in the headlines. News outlets such as the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post reported that the bristlecone pine was “in peril” and threatened by extinction due to a warming climate. The news came. . .   Read More

On September 15 02017, the Cassini-Huygens probe, which spent the last 13 years of a 20-year space mission studying Saturn, plummeted as planned into the ringed planet’s atmosphere, catching fire and becoming a meteor.

Farewell Cassini, how far you’ve come. On this eve, in fiery death, Saturn & you are one. . .   Read More

In 01872, California Governor Leland Stanford hired the famed photographer Eadweard Muybridge to settle a question of popular debate—whether all four of a horse’s feet ever left the ground when it galloped. The resulting series of photographs, Sallie Gardner at a Gallop, showed without a doubt that horses do indeed go airborne at. . .   Read More

Billy Barr was just trying to get away from it all when he went to live at the base of Gothic Mountain in the Colorado wilderness in 1973. He wound up creating an invaluable historical record of climate change. His motivation for meticulously logging the changing temperatures, snow levels, weather, and wildlife sightings? Simple boredom. . .   Read More

Technological advances are revolutionizing the field of archaeology, resulting in new discoveries that are upending our previous understanding of the birth of civilization. Many scholars believe that few will be as consequential as Göbekli Tepe.

The ruins of Göbekli Tepe. Photograph by Vincent J. Musi.

IN 01963, anthropologists from the University of Chicago. . .   Read More