Pure Science

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In 2009, MRI research on psychopathy was presented for the first time in a United States courtroom in the homicide case State v. Brian Dugan. Since then, neuroimaging research on psychopathy appears to have made its way into the court...

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Sitting in an emptying bathtub and watching a vortex of water swirl down the drain is one of the simplest joys of childhood (and adulthood for those who shun showers and opt for the tub). Now this mesmerizing pleasure may help astronomers...

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Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel Anna Karenina has among the most famous first lines of any book: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Psychologists tend to agree. The evidence keeps piling up. Studies...

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On today’s date (July 24) in 1991, British physicist Andrew Lyne claimed to have discovered the first planet outside our solar system—an Earth-shattering announcement following centuries of inquiry into the mysterious depths of space....

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It’s November, and Arlyn Charlie feels uneasy. As he steps across the frozen surface of the Teetł’it Gwinjik, a river in Gwich’in territory in northwest Canada, the ice cracks beneath his feet. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free...

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When geologist Hanika Rizo goes into the field she spends most of her time looking at her feet. Simply by trekking across the stark Arctic landscape in Northern Quebec, and paying close attention to the ground, she can glean clues about...

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Human musical memory is surprisingly durable: Babies can recognize familiar tunes, and people with dementia can often recall songs from their youth. Some tunes are especially sticky, whether we want to remember them or not. But scientists...

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A ​cloud-​forest is a ​river​­maker. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Cloud-​forests form at higher altitudes than rainforests: typically between 3,000 and 8,000 feet above sea level, in steep...

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This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Did you know that mushrooms can get sick? It was 1948, on a Pennsylvania mushroom farm operated by...

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The paths wind weaves through the world remain largely invisible to us. And it’s proved challenging to track on a large scale over history. But I recently happened upon this entrancing model of the world’s winds, set in motion. ...

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One of the most enduring defenses of meat eating is that we evolved to do it, and therefore must continue to do so. The claim goes that our ape and hominin ancestors were frequent, even obligatory meat eaters, and that we thus remain...

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You might not find ants and termites tasty, but plenty of animals have throughout evolutionary history: It turns out that ant-eating mammals have evolved independently more than 12 times over the past 66 million years. But how did species...

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The Indo-Pacific Ocean hosts a kaleidoscope of sea creatures, every color imaginable writhing in the shallow reefs and crystal-clear water. And now, thanks to the efforts of amateur naturalists and researchers, two of these...

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This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Using a tiny, spherical glass lens sandwiched between two brass plates, the 17th-century Dutch...

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If you treasure the recipe for your aunt’s special pasta salad, you might have something in common with Neanderthals. Our ancient ancestors may have passed down family cooking traditions, according to recently reported findings from two...

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In 1851, during the Great Exhibition in London, England, a collection of stuffed hummingbirds attracted over 75,000 people, including Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens, and Charles Darwin. The collector, John Gould, had prepared 1,500 birds...

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When a work room is hot and sticky, it can be challenging to focus—and people can get grumpy quickly. While many studies have looked at the impact of heat on individuals’ ability to work, few have studied the impact that higher...

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Peer at a drop of pond scum under a microscope, and you will see a world of tiny microbes duking it out for their share of real estate and resources. To gain the upper hand, some of them will barrage their rivals with toxins. Nautilus...

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Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Fire may seem as inherent to this planet as earth, wind, and water. But while writing Strata, I learned that flames were all but absent here for more than 90 percent...

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We live on a planet veiled in blue. And yet, though the ocean surrounds us, nourishes us, shapes our weather and our myths, our knowledge of it is limited. This paradox—of presence without understanding—is not new to the human condition....

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The walls of Wyoming’s Bighorn Canyon rise above a slender lake that once ran as a river. That river flowed for many thousands of years, surging at the end of the last ice age as melting glaciers sent torrents down the Rocky Mountains and...

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If you walk through my community garden, past the prolific greenery, tucked into a shaded corner, just next to the stacks of hives, you’ll find an altar adorned with a jar of honey and a piece of comb. It serves as a sobering reminder...

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In January 2024, officials from the Kenya Wildlife Service undertook a massive mission: translocating 21 black rhinoceroses (Diceros bicornis) to a region where they hadn’t lived for half a century. Black rhinos can weigh as much as a...

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Our cosmic neighborhood may be teeming with hidden galaxies. And if new simulations that suggest the existence of such features are borne out by actual observations, we may better understand how our universe is built and how galaxies form...

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Over the past six months, algae has spread bloom by bloom across the crumbling tanks of a now-closed marine park called Marineland Antibes on the French Riviera, polluting the waters where more than a dozen marine creatures remain...

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These days, many people struggle to keep up with the state of the world without being overcome by a sense of despair that’s as profound as it is difficult to describe. Unless you happen to speak German. Nautilus Members enjoy an...

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Tortoises have feelings, too: Researchers have provided the first solid evidence that these long-lived reptiles experience moods, a crucial aspect of sentience. This finding adds new complexity to our understanding of these creatures’...

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When wind blows across the ocean’s surface, it forms a wave. A single wave can travel thousands of miles before breaking on land; for example, some waves generated off the coast of New Zealand roll all the way to the West Coast of North...

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Age is just a number, they say. But being young at heart might be less important than being “young” in other places. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Chronological age and biological age are known...

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From the most wretched servant to the most exalted prince, people in ancient Egypt ate bread and drank beer with every meal. These staples were so vital to their diet that, in Egyptian hieroglyphs, the combined symbols for bread and beer...

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Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . I used to look at coral fossils and think, how great things must have been for these creatures back before humans began stirring up trouble for the planet, like...

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Our universe contains multitudes. And the newly operational Vera C. Rubin Observatory is capturing more details of these multitudes for us to behold—and learn from. One revelation is an in-depth look at a portion of the Virgo Cluster, a...

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I’ve been fascinated by time for as long as I can remember. In my undergraduate physics classes, time always lurked in the background—it was the “t” that the professors sprinkled into their equations—but it was never quite clear what time...

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Science and art are, in many ways, parallel forms of inquiry: They arise from the human imagination, profoundly shape our understanding of the universe, involve experimentation, and rely on manipulating Earthly materials. These...

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“Wealth and splendor—what befit mankind— Are bestowed, multiplied, and regally granted.” Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . You’ve just read the lines of a hymn lost to history for a millennium,...

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Ancient works of impressive architecture inspire awe the world over. The Great Pyramid of Giza. The Parthenon in Athens. Machu Picchu in Peru. But archaeologists had previously assumed that it took a complex society, with institutionalized...

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Lemurs are remarkably lithe creatures. With long tails providing balance and powerful, slender limbs outfitted with opposable thumbs and toes, they move with ease through the craggy limestone spires of western Madagascar’s Tsingy de...

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The pantheon of artists and musicians is littered with lefties: Vincent van Gogh, Jimi Hendrix, Emily Dickinson, David Bowie, Lady Gaga, to name just a few. In the popular imagination, left-handedness and creative genius have long been...

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An extraordinary vacation is one that opens the mind. When turning the corner in a new place brings a shift in perspective that sparks surprise and delight—and, if you’re lucky, even wonder. At Nautilus, we find that great books can do the...

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One of the greatest questions of the modern age is: Is it cake? As in: Is it an espresso machine, or cake? Paint can, or cake? Air fryer, or …? Millions of viewers have watched rapt as TikTok  bakers slice or bite into...

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Consider a gamer playing a game. Maybe one of them is in a room near you right now. You hear periodic outbursts of anger and joy. They’ve been at it for hours. These games might be easy to pick up, but they sure aren’t easy to win. As...

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Ebenezer Scrooge might have been onto something about cheese and nightmares. In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the grump attributed his ghost sighting, in part, to a “a crumb of cheese” that upset his stomach and deranged his...

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In England’s Hertfordshire county, a fork-jawed nomad bee (Nomada ruficornis) dangles from a single blade of grass, covered in morning dew. It rests in preparation for another day of calculated trickery. Nautilus Members enjoy an...

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The waters around Antarctica have suddenly and unexpectedly started getting saltier. This flips a decades-long trend of falling ocean salinity, which had protected southern sea ice against melting.  Nautilus Members enjoy an...

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It’s strange how your brain can fool you—and how something small, some offhand detail, can shake your confidence in the way you remember your own life. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . For years,...

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Issue 62 of the Nautilus print edition combines some of the best content from our May and June 2025 online issues. It includes contributions from science writer Amanda Gefter, evolutionary biologist Neil...

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Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . If humans have been talking for 200,000 years—for most of our species’ existence, that is—then an estimated half a million languages might have been spoken in all. To...

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You’ve likely experienced it before: Feeling your worst after a series of soul-crushing setbacks, say, getting a flat tire shortly after losing your favorite watch. But when a friend cracks a joke about the cruelty of fate and begins to...

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Amanda Gefter has lived with Peter Putnam in her head for 12 years now. “I feel like I know him better than the actual people I know,” she said to me with a peal of laughter, as if confessing a secret that she had kept inside her for so...

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For decades, ecologists have puzzled over a mystery: Why do some natural habitats get overrun by invasive species while others seem to repel outside threats? In a classic 1958 book on the subject, the ecologist Charles Elton...