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LiDAR image of the Fazenda Atlântica archaeological site in Acre, Brazil. Credit: M. Pärssinen and F. de Novaes

On the Bookshelf Civilization Written Into the Land

Amazônia: Os Geoglifos e a Civilização Aquiry, by Alceu Ranzi and Martti Pärssinen

Before satellites and laser scans confirmed a civilization of possibly millions once thrived in the western Amazon, Brazilian geographer Alceu Ranzi and Finnish archaeologist Martti Pärssinen had already spent decades walking that ground, tracing the shapes cut into it, and giving that civilization a name. In Amazônia: Os Geoglifos e a Civilização Aquiry (2021), they lay out the case for the Aquiry...

Raffael Spachtholz and Katharina Glöckl beside the scanning tunneling microscope setup used in the experiment

Raffael Spachtholz and Katharina Glöckl · University of Regensburg

Science A High-Speed Camera for the Electron

Katharina Glöckl and Raffael Spachtholz on electron motion

Some experiments reveal, above all, the limits of what can be known. In July, researchers at the Regensburg Center for Ultrafast Nanoscopy, working with...

The restored Borges Labyrinth viewed from above on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore

The restored Labyrinth, aerial view. Credit: Courtesy Fondazione Giorgio Cini

Architecture Time Is Itself an Architect

Renata Codello on Restoring the Borges Labyrinth

A labyrinth, by definition, resists being fully known from within it. You can walk its paths, but you cannot see its whole shape while you are inside it. That is...

Encounters

Glacier Walk Iceland © Saumya Kesurvala

Among Mountains and Glaciers

Enter the Gallery

Our Narratives is a place where contributors share the ideas, stories, and discoveries that move us forward, inspiring each other toward a better future.

From the Magazine

A protocell drifting in the shallow, mineral-rich waters of the early Earth, with a fatty membrane enclosing a strand of RNA

Science

Before the First Cell

When chemistry became biology

Somewhere on the early Earth, between three and four billion years ago, chemistry became biology. No one knows exactly where, how, or how many times it might...

Diagram tracing the divergence of the operational code and the standard genetic code from a shared evolutionary origin

Science

Before the Genetic Code

On the origins of biological meaning

One of the deepest questions in biology remains unresolved. Life depends on a translation system that converts nucleotide sequences into proteins through the genetic code, yet the origins of that system reach back to a period before modern cells existed.

Quantum physics experiment exploring whether time emerges from within a closed system

Science

What Time Is Made Of

When time emerges from within

Time is one of the most familiar aspects of human experience and one of the least understood in physics. We feel it passing. We measure it constantly. And...