A rusty patch on an old rock rarely attracts much attention. Perhaps rainwater has been running over it for years, leaving orange and brown stains where the minerals have reacted with their surroundings. To us, these changes seem entirely chemical, the slow weathering of something that has never been alive. But in certain environments, microorganisms …
A patch of moss growing on an old wall can look completely lifeless after several weeks without rain. Its green colour fades, its delicate structures shrink, and what was once soft becomes dry and brittle. You might assume that the moss has died, especially if the wall has been exposed to a particularly harsh summer. …
Look around the room for a moment. You can see the walls, the furniture, perhaps a window and whatever lies beyond it. Everything appears to occupy its proper place, with no obvious gaps in the scene. Even when you close one eye, the world still seems reasonably complete. Yet each eye has a small region …
You probably remember learning that the nucleus is the control centre of a cell, the place where DNA stores the instructions needed to build and maintain a living organism. It is a useful explanation, although it leaves out an unusual detail. Scattered throughout many of your cells are tiny structures called mitochondria, and they carry …
There is probably a photograph of you as a baby somewhere in your family’s collection. Perhaps you are sitting on someone’s lap, staring at the camera with an expression nobody can explain anymore. Your parents might remember when it was taken, what you were doing that day, or how difficult it was to make you …
Try running your fingers lightly along the side of your neck or across the sole of your foot. You will certainly feel the touch, and it might even be a little uncomfortable, but it is unlikely to make you burst into laughter. Now picture someone else lightly touching that very same spot. Suddenly, you might …
You pick up a towel from the clothesline and press it against your cheek. It looks dry, but something about it tells you otherwise. The fabric feels slightly cool against your skin, and when you squeeze it between your fingers, you can tell it hasn’t dried completely. You might even ask someone else to check …
You send a voice message without thinking much about it, then press play to check what you said. The words are yours. The accent is yours. Yet the person speaking seems to have borrowed your sentences and delivered them in a voice that is thinner, sharper or less assured than the one you remember using. …
Someone hands you a seashell and tells you to listen. You raise it to your ear, perhaps standing on a beach, perhaps sitting in a room hundreds of kilometres from the nearest coast, and there it is: a soft, hollow rushing sound. As a child, you may have accepted the explanation that the shell remembers …
There is something slightly unsettling about the way you are reading these words. You probably feel as though your eyes are looking directly at a screen, your brain is observing the letters, and somewhere inside your head the meaning is being understood. But your brain has never seen this screen. It has never seen a …
