AuthorAurora

The Marabou stork is a scavenger bird usually found on the African continent south of the Sahara. Like most storks, it has long legs and a long, stout bill, perfectly engineered for catching fish and small aquatic animals, but the Marabou stork is even more unique in its appearance—and dietary preference. Bald-headed and scabbed, sporting large, reddish air sacs on their necks, and reeking of...

Liquids are shape-shifters. Part of the definition of a liquid is that it takes the shape of whatever container you put it in (which is why there have been occasional investigations into whether cats qualify). The Earths gravity pulls liquid seawater towards the center of the planet, and so the ocean has filled the regions of Earths surface which are closest to the middle. But for all its lumps...

For my first trip I would receive a “super-dose” of ketamine intravenously while having my brain scanned in a 3-Tesla fMRI machine. Unless I was lucky, in which case it would be a high dose of dimethyltryptamine (DMT), lying between the large rings of a PET (positron emission tomography) scanner. This was the psychonautical equivalent of a three-star Anthology meal at the Fat Duck, or a...

Im going to give you the bad news first. The distances between stars are so large that they might be impossible to routinely cross. Sure, maybe you send robot probes that reach their target in two hundred years (and then you need another century or so for a message to get back). But the possibility that you, I, or anybody else can pop around to the best vacation planets in the galactic empire may...

The Groupon advertisement said these sensory-deprivation sessions relax the mind. They start by placing you at square one—stripped all the way down to your skin. A session starts with a shower in which the dirt and grime of the world is scrubbed and shampooed away. Next you step into the tank. It’s warmed to the surface temperature of human skin and has about one thousand pounds of Epsom salt...