Science | The Atlantic
A Secret Code May Have Been Hiding in Classical Music for 200 Years
S. I. Rosenbaum
In the spring of 1825, Ludwig van Beethoven was struck by a gut ailment so severe that he thought he might die. That summer, after he recovered, he returned to the string quartet he'd been writing before his illness--Quartet No. 15 in A Minor, Op. 132--and added a new segment inspired by his survival. To this day, the piece is known for the slowly unfolding, baffled joy of its third movement, where the music seems to trace the shuffling steps of an invalid breathing fresh air for the first time in ...
The Coming Birth-Control Revolution
Katherine J. Wu
This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.Within the next couple of decades, a new generation of contraceptives could hit the American market. One, a pill that blocks certain cells from accessing vitamin A, might be able to limit fertility without flooding the body with hormones; another is an injection that temporarily blocks up the reproductive plumbing. The method that's furthest along in trials is a topical gel that promises to induce temporary i...
A 600-Year-Old Blueprint for Weathering Climate Change
Kathleen DuVal
Around the year 1300, the Huhugam great chief Siwani ruled over a mighty city near what is now Phoenix, Arizona. His domain included adobe-and-stone pyramids that towered several stories above the desert; an irrigation system that watered 15,000 acres of crops; and a large castle. The O'odham descendants of the Huhugam tell in their oral history that Siwani "reaped very large harvests with his two servants, the Wind and the Storm-cloud." By Siwani's time, Huhugam farms and cities had thrived in t...
What's So Bad About Asking Where Humans Came From?
William Deresiewicz
Here is an origin story about origin stories. Once upon a time, we knew where we came from: Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, the Fall. Then came modern science, modern doubt. Geology, paleontology: The world grew older very fast. Skulls were discovered, and stone tools. Human origins became a problem and a fascination. Who are we? How did we emerge? And given who we think we may be, how should we live?In The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession With Human Origins, the int...
The Most Dazzling Eclipse in the Universe
Adam Frank
Eclipses are not particularly rare in the universe. One occurs every time a planet, its orbiting moon, and its sun line up. Nearly every planet has a sun, and astronomers have reason to believe that many of them have moons, so shadows are bound to be cast on one world or another as the years pass.But solar eclipses like the one that millions of Americans will watch on April 8--in which a blood-red ring and shimmering corona emerge to surround a blackened sun--are a cosmic fluke. They're an unlikely...
The Clock Is Running Out on Migratory Birds
Natalia Mesa
This article was originally published by High Country News.At a glance, the male western tanager looks like a little flame, its ruby head blending seamlessly into its bright, lemon-colored body. Females are less showy, a dusty yellow. The birds spend their winters in Central America and can be found in a variety of habitats, from central Costa Rica to the deserts of southeastern Sonora, in western Mexico. In the spring, they prepare to migrate thousands of miles to the conifer forests of the Moun...
Everything You Know About Killer Whales Is Wrong
Craig Welch
This article was originally published in Hakai Magazine.John Ford still recalls the first time he heard them. He'd been puttering around the Deserters Group archipelago, a smattering of spruce- and cedar-choked islands in Queen Charlotte Strait, between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia. He was piloting a small skiff and trailing a squad of six killer whales. Ford, then a graduate student, had been enamored of cetacean sounds since listening to belugas chirp while he worked part-time...
The CDC Is Squandering the Breakthrough RSV Vaccine
Katherine J. Wu
When a new RSV vaccine for pregnant people arrived last fall, Sarah Turner, a family-medicine physician at Lutheran Hospital, in Indiana, couldn't help but expect some pushback. At most, about half of her eligible pregnant patients opt to get a flu vaccine, she told me, and "very few" agree to the COVID shot.But to Turner's surprise, patients clamored for the RSV shot--some opting in even more eagerly than they did for Tdap, which protects newborns against pertussis and had previously been her eas...
Too Few Americans Are Eating a Remarkable Fruit
Zoe Schlanger
Someplace in the lush backroads of San Sebastian, in western Puerto Rico, my friend Carina pulled the car over. At a crest in the road stood a breadfruit tree, full of basketball-size, lime-green fruits, knobbled and prehistoric, like a dinosaur egg covered in ostrich leather. One had recently fallen. I jumped out to scoop it up, thinking about the breadfruit tostones we would make that afternoon. We'd fry chunks of the white, spongy flesh, then smash them with the back of a cast-iron pan, then f...
America's Climate Boomtowns Are Waiting
Abrahm Lustgarten
As my airplane flew low over the flatlands of western Michigan on a dreary December afternoon, sunbursts splintered the soot-toned clouds and made mirrors out of the flooded fields below. There was plenty of rain in this part of the Rust Belt--sometimes too much. Past the endless acres, I could make out the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, then soon, in the other direction, the Detroit River, Lakes Huron and Erie, and southern Canada. In a world running short on fresh water in its lakes and rivers,...
Don't Miss This Eclipse
Marina Koren
Related PodcastListen to Marina Koren and Hanna Rosin on Radio Atlantic:Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Google Podcasts | Pocket CastsRight now, a special cosmic arrangement is sliding into place. The moon has positioned itself on the same side of Earth as the sun. The moon has drawn closer to Earth, and its orbit is tilted just so. On April 8, our silvery satellite will pass between our star and our planet, and cast its shadow upon us. In the United States, the darkness will...