The honeycomb is probably the most cited example of mathematics in nature. Rows of near-identical hexagonal cells, walls meeting at consistent angles, packed with no wasted space — and produced…
Ask why the sky is blue and you will get one of three answers. That it reflects the sea. That the atmosphere is somehow blue in the way tinted glass…
The Dead Sea Is Not a Sea, and Its Water Is So Dense With Salt That a Human Body Cannot Sink Into It
The Dead Sea produces one of the most recognisable travel photographs there is: a person lying on their back on the surface of the water, reading a newspaper, entirely unsupported.…
There are natural phenomena that photographs oversell, and this is one of the few that photographs undersell, largely because cameras struggle with it.
The effect is simple to describe. In…
Fingerprints feel like a distinctly primate thing, and mostly they are. Humans have them, as do chimpanzees, orangutans and other primates, which makes sense given how recently we shared an…
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch may be the most misunderstood environmental subject there is, and the misunderstanding is remarkably specific. People do not merely have a vague sense of it;…