Biology | Astronomy
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Chapter one
Chance of Showers
Matter | Environment
The Dueling Weathermen of the 1800s
This bitter dispute set the stage for the modern weather forecast.
Biology | Environment
The Dead Sea Lives!
Why scientists question the longstanding plan to merge the Dead Sea and the Red Sea.
Culture | Technology
To Save California, Read “Dune”
Survival on a fictional desert planet has a lesson for the drought-stricken state.
Chapter two
Murky Waters
Matter | Chemistry
Five Things We Still Don’t Know About Water
From steam to ice, water continues to mystify.
Matter | Chemistry
Ingenious: Richard Saykally
The chemist tells us why water is wet.
Matter | Physics
To Predict Turbulence, Just Count the Puffs
These tiny swirls of fluid live, die, reproduce, and spark turbulence.
Biology | Environment
The Deadly Plant Sneeze
High-speed cameras capture how bouncing rain spreads crop disease.
Chapter three
Running Dry
Ideas | Philosophy
The Real Landscapes of the Great Flood Myths
In Tibet, a geologist learns how folk stories may record actual catastrophes.
Matter | Climate
The Hidden Importance of Clouds
A climate scientist asks whether nature can save us from ourselves.
Culture | Fiction
Hardly Never in Vegas
Fat Johnny Little and Salty Salt Sue make a break for the desert.
Matter | Aliens
Why Discovering Martians Could Be Disappointing
There are two kinds of extraterrestrial life with very different implications.
Chapter four
Submerged
Matter | Earth Science
The Last Drop of Water in Broken Hill
In the Australian outback, the future of drought has come early.
Biology | Physiology
Is This New Swim Stroke the Fastest Yet?
The surprising performance and physics of the fish kick.
Matter | Earth Science
In Search of Life’s Smoking Gun
A journey to the underwater volcanoes where life may have erupted.
Matter | Oceanography
The Ocean in Motion
How Earth’s seas get around.
Matter | Astronomy
The Beckoning of the Ice Worlds
We’ve been looking for life on Earth-like planets. Will Europa teach us better?
Related Facts So Romantic
“Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.” —Jules Verne
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Culture
Water & Vice: Producing Intoxicants in an Era of Extreme Drought
California is thirsty. The state is in its fourth year of a drought that is especially severe, by any measure. For instance, an April 1 snowpack measurement, a key indicator of surface-water…
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Biology
A Fijian Village Adapts Tradition to Try to Save Its Ailing Reefs
The day that conservation biologist Joshua Drew, his two students, and I arrive in the Fijian village of Nagigi, the wind is blowing so hard that the coconut palms are bent sideways. “Trade…
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Numbers
The Rube Goldberg Machine That Mastered Keynesian Economics
While researching my soon-to-be-released biography on John Horton Conway, an iconoclastic and very influential mathematician at Princeton, I organized a research trip to his native England. We…
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Numbers
This Early Computer Was Based on a Urinal Flush Mechanism
John Horton Conway, a Fellow of the Royal Society who hails from Princeton via Cambridge, England, is notorious for many things—perhaps most for his promiscuous curiosity and his lifelong…
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