Asher Elbein

2 months ago | quantamagazine.org | Ingrid Wickelgren |Asher Elbein |Yasemin Saplakoglu

Introduction After shuffling the cards in a standard 52-card deck, Alex Mullen, a three-time world memory champion, can memorize their order in under 20 seconds. As he flips though the cards, he takes a mental walk through a house. At each point in his journey — the mailbox, front door, staircase and so on — he attaches a card. To recall the cards, he relives the trip.

2 months ago | nytimes.com | Asher Elbein

It's taken decades, but scientists may have finally found Earth's first fowl. It started in 1993 on Vega Island, a frigid, windswept rock off the Antarctic Peninsula. A mostly headless skeleton of a loon-size diving bird emerged from rocks that, at 68 million years old, predated the dinosaur extinction. The species, which scientists named Vegavis iaai, presented a puzzle: What bird was it a feather of?

2 months ago | quantamagazine.org | Ingrid Wickelgren |Asher Elbein |Yasemin Saplakoglu |Veronique Greenwood

Introduction DNA is often compared to a written language. The metaphor leaps out: Like letters of the alphabet, molecules (the nucleotide bases A, T, C and G, for adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine) are arranged into sequences — words, paragraphs, chapters, perhaps — in every organism, from bacteria to humans. Like a language, they encode information. But humans can’t easily read or interpret these instructions for life.

2 months ago | texasmonthly.com | Asher Elbein

Working Life is a monthly column in which Texans talk about their jobs. Steve Oleson, who is seventy, is the owner of the Austin-based company Winged Victory. The lifelong falconer uses raptors to scare pest birds away from storefronts and parking lots. I started training hawks when I was in seventh grade in San Antonio, back in the sixties. A pet store had a couple of little falcons called kestrels.

2 months ago | quantamagazine.org | Asher Elbein |Yasemin Saplakoglu |Veronique Greenwood |Molly Herring

Introduction Most of life’s engines run on sunlight. Photons filter down through the atmosphere and are eagerly absorbed by light-powered organisms such as plants and algae. Through photosynthesis, the particles of light power a cellular reaction that manufactures chemical energy (in the form of sugars), which is then passed around the food web in a complex dance of herbivores, predators, scavengers, decomposers and more. On a bright, sunny day, there’s a wealth of photons to go around.