We see ancient edifices around the globe, like thе pyramids in Egypt, Borobudur in Indonesia, and the Pyramid of the Sun in the Valley of Mexico, and we ask ourselves, how? How could mankind, so far back in time, build such enormous structures? And all without the advanced technology we enjoy today. Furthermore, when one looks […]
Somewhere between Ballydehob and Skibbereen, the G.P.S. directed me down a narrow country road toward an indentation in the southwestern Irish coast called Roaringwater Bay. The castle I was looking for had been one of the last to fall to the English, in the early 1600s, in a coda to the historic Battle of Kinsale, […]
One morning in may, the existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom was recuperating in a sunny room on the first floor of a Palo Alto convalescent hospital. He was dressed in white pants and a green sweater, not a hospital gown, and was quick to point out that he is not normally confined to a medical facility. “I […]
Photographer Tomasz Lazar asks us to envision the final walk of those who have died inAokigahara forest—as well as the spirits that remain. At the base of Mount Fuji is a dense, verdant forest. From above, the trees swaying in the wind are reminiscent of the sea, giving the Aokigahara forest a second name—Jukai, or […]
Neutrinos and their weird subatomic ways could help us understand high-energy particles, exploding stars and the origins of matter itself. Why, after millions of years of steadily lighting the cold darkness, does a supergiant star suddenly explode in a blinding blaze of glory brighter than 100 billion stars? What exotic objects in deep space are […]
It all started with an educational video. Benjamin Grant grew up as one of those kids fascinated by the idea of outer space, and our place in the universe. He ended up starting a “space club” at his first post-university job in New York, where everyone “ate lunch by themselves, at their desk, every day,” […]
It has long been thought that the so-called “Golden Ratio” described in Euclid’sElements has “implications for numerous natural phenomena… from the leaf and seed arrangements of plants” and “from the arts to the stock market.” So writes astrophysicist Mario Livio, head of the science division for the institute that oversees the Hubble Telescope. And yet, […]
Color is an essential part of how we experience the world, both biologically and culturally. One of the earliest formal explorations of color theory came from an unlikely source — the German poet, artist, and politician Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who in 1810 published Theory of Colors (public library; public domain), his treatise on the […]