You are breathing galaxies. Not stars and nebulae, but drifting constellations of bacteria, pollen grains, viral fragments, and dust motes, all swirling in and out of your lungs with every breath. For most of human history this invisible universe was blamed for curses, bad air, or pure chance, because we simply could not see ...
Life on Earth is far stranger, more flexible, and more inventive than most of us were ever taught in school. In the last few decades, biologists have uncovered organisms that rewrite the rules of aging, communication systems that work without nerves or voices, and genes that behave more like software patches than fixed blueprints. ...
Death and life have been considered for millennia as complete opposites, a binary switch with permanent reversal. But creative new research suggests a possible third state of life whereby cells persistently function, adapt, and even create new life after the death of the organism they belonged to, so defying accepted definitions. Called a “third state,” ...
