Oct 10, 2025
In the famous first stanza of the 17th-century poem “Auguries of Innocence,” William Blake writes: To see a world in a grain of sandAnd a heaven in a wild flower,Hold infinity in the palm of your handAnd eternity in an hour. Perhaps Blake didn’t...
Sep 29, 2025
Around 10,000 years ago, a paradigm shift in human history began to unfold. Prior to this transitional period, which archaeologists refer to as the Neolithic Revolution—the final phase of the Stone Age—small societies were organized around hunting and gathering for...
Sep 25, 2025
From a remarkable demonstration of flower self-pollination to algae swimming in a water droplet in a Japanese 50 Yen coin, the winners of this year’s Nikon Small World in Motion competition capture some of the natural world’s most beautiful, otherworldly,...
Sep 24, 2025
Alive. Synthetic Cells, Feral Robots, Rebellious AI, & the Design of Radical Life, by artist, writer, filmmaker, architect and educator Madeline Schwartzman. Foreword by writer Edward Ashton. Published by Thames & Hudson. Madeline Schwartzman brings together...
Sep 19, 2025
From aurora borealis to the Milky Way to distant nebulae, cosmic phenomena induces wonder like little else. When faced with distant galaxies and the seemingly endless sea of trillions of stars—a trillion trillion, actually, known as a septillion—the sheer scope is...
Sep 17, 2025
In 1903, on a farm in southeastern Norway, a once-in-a-lifetime discovery emerged from within a large yet unassuming mound in a field. When the spot was excavated in 1904, the mound revealed an entire Viking longship that had been interred in its entirety as a burial...
Sep 11, 2025
Thanks to increasingly advanced imaging technologies, researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), in collaboration with SUNY Geneseo, have an unprecedented ability to glimpse rare and previously unknown marine species. In 2019, an encounter...
Sep 10, 2025
Since time immemorial, we have been awed by the ornate patterns, metamorphosis, and migrations of butterflies and moths. Their uncanny life stages and spectrum of vibrant colors and textures—both as caterpillars and as adult insects—endlessly inspire wonder....
Aug 23, 2025
Anyone who’s donned protective glasses and spent hours camped outside with eyes toward the sky knows the strange, life-changing experience of witnessing a solar eclipse. The lunar equivalents are intriguing, too, and have fascinated people around the world for...
Aug 19, 2025
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the image above is from a remote part of the Atacama Desert in Chile, or perhaps a broad, sandy expanse like those found in parts of Utah. But you’d have to journey quite a bit farther to reach this landscape—more than...
Aug 19, 2025
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the image above is from a remote part of the Atacama Desert in Chile, or perhaps a broad, sandy expanse like those found in parts of Utah. But you’d have to journey quite a bit farther to reach this landscape—more than...
Jul 29, 2025
In the 1800s, mycology—the study of fungi—was a relatively new field, emerging around the same time as Enlightenment-era studies in botany and herbal medicine. Science and art converged in works like Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herbal, along with German...