Author: Charles Humphreys

Those aggravating slowdowns aren’t one driver’s fault. They’re everybody’s fault.

In 1972 the Club of Rome, an international think tank, commissioned four scientists to use computers to model the human future. The result was the infamous Limits to Growth that crashed into world culture like an asteroid from space. Collapse, calamity and chaos were the media take-aways from the book, even though the authors tried […]

Today Nautilus launched its second issue, “Uncertainty: A new look at an indeterminate world.” For now we’ve just opened up the first chapter, “Uncertainty in Nature,” with looks at how uncertainty is embedded in math, particles of matter, our genomes, and possibly space-time itself. The rest of the issue will emerge over the course of […]

The variability in how people smell has a lot to do with their genetics.

Despite their great distance from Earthbound politics, exoplanets were the topic of a joint hearing on May 9th of the House space and research subcommittees. The recent discovery of a trio of temperate super-Earths was the hearing’s impetus, but most of the discussion was devoted to future prospects—chiefly, how and when scientists might learn whether […]

You are standing on a sandy plain lit only by the harsh, cold light of a blue-white spark flashing overhead in steady metronomic bursts. The pinprick of light almost seems like a distant star, but each flash raises a disturbing tingling sensation within you, suggesting the stroboscopic light source is somehow nearby, and must be […]

Where we part ways with our ape cousins.

Where we part ways with our ape cousins.

What a broken bathroom hook has to do with Norwegian ethnography and the cable guy.

One of history’s greatest downfalls is its asymmetry of acclaim, catapulting some figures into legend status while making others, even those of great cultural contribution, mere footnotes.