Life, Reality, and Eating Plastic

Does Life Exist? (Big Think)
by Sara Imari Walker
Cutting-edge science once held that living things were composed of something fundamentally different from inorganic matter. We now know that’s not true. But where does that leave us in understanding what differentiates life from other physical phenomena?

Does Reality Exist? (Nautilus)
by Vijay Balasubramanian
When we try to describe the world around us, we use a combination of sensory perceptions and models that explain them. But, from ancient philosophers to modern physicists, some people have always questioned whether there’s really anything to describe.

Selling Nazism at a Hollywood Bookstore (Literary Hub)
by Evan Friss
In 1933, agents of the Nazi Party opened a bookstore in Los Angeles to bring Americans to the cause of Aryan supremacy. It was just one of many bookstores across the country with propagandistic purposes.

Can We Eat the Plastic-Eaters? (Undark)
by Sara Talpos
Humans need food, and we need to get rid of plastic waste. Experiments supported by DARPA are exploring the possibility of using microbes to transform that garbage into something we can eat—including the microbes themselves.

Decoding the Wow! Signal (Ars Technica)
by Jennifer Ouellette
The Wow! signal has mystified scientists and the public since it was discovered in astronomical observations in 1977. New data suggests a possible explanation. It’s not aliens.

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