Author: Monica Parker

Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) uses the VLA (Very Large Array) to look for alien signals. But that’s not the only way. Warner Brothers When people think about SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, they imagine messages sent via radio—Jodie Foster tuning antennas, hoping to pick up signals from the “billions and billions” of star systems […]

A roving meditation on nature, literature, and the joy of collecting flies.

The inaugural issue of the Nautilus Quarterly combines some of the best content from our issues on Human Uniqueness, Uncertainty, and In Transit, with new original contributions from the world’s best thinkers and gorgeous full-color illustrations.  The issue includes contributions by Stanford University Primatologist Robert Sapolsky; quantum computing pioneer David Deutsch; best-selling author Tom Vanderbilt; biologist Aaron Hirsh; and best-selling author Jared […]

Long before David Blaine, there was the mimicry of the tiger moth—it avoids bats by emitting an ultrasonic signature similar to that of a noxious species. Long before that, some physicists say, an alien civilization launched an intricate simulation of reality, which we currently inhabit. Even if that hypothesis is false, don’t we entertain our […]

They say that home is the place where they have to take you in. Is it? From stellar birth clusters and allergic adaption, to symbiotic evolution and our personal microbiome, Nature has its own definitions of home. And our own ideas are shifting: Our physical homes are under renovation, and what we do at home […]

There is only a certain level of novelty that most people are willing to tolerate.

It’s time to relax about genetic testing.

Love notes and warning messages are buried in Earth’s frozen archive.

Creative robots, the Kurzweil fallacy, and what it means to be human.

The Martian started as a self-published blog, and became a major motion picture.