By Alexander Stone There is a concept in civil engineering known as the desire line – the unofficial path worn into the earth by people…
By Alexander Stone The Danish Heart of England By Sara Bright In the autumn of 865, a force described in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as the…
By Alexander Stone She was the daughter of a poet. Her mother, Annabella Milbanke, a brilliant mathematician herself, saw in the cold certainties of numbers…
By Alexander Stone Ten years ago, scientists found a planet called Kepler-452b. It’s often called Earth’s twin. It orbits a star like our sun. Its…
By Alexander Stone We are drowning in data, yet thirsting for meaning. We live in an age of supposed perfect recall, our lives documented in…
By Alexander Stone In the collective imagination, British fairy tales are polite affairs – Paddington at a railway station, Peter Rabbit stealing lettuce, the Wind…
In the high, dry altitude of the Chilean Andes, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) operates with a singular, pragmatic mandate: to scan the…
There is a new ghost haunting the young. It is a highly convenient, scientifically approved spectre that is routinely summoned to explain away everything from…
By Alexander Stone You’ve hit a certain age, maybe your mid-forties or fifties, and you’ve had a routine health check with your GP. Along with…
By Alexander Stone The peacock mantis shrimp (Odontodactylus scyllarus) weighs roughly 50 grams. It strikes at 23 metres per second – faster than a .22…