How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Uncertainty

Plus: making sense of big ocean data; this week’s Behind the Scenes with Sarah DeWeerdt; and some of the most popular stories from Nautilus. [View in browser]( | [Become a member]( EDITORS’ CHOICE November 20, 2022   Did a friend forward this? [Subscribe here](. Good Morning! This Sunday, read the latest and most popular stories from Nautilus—plus, watch this week’s Behind the Scenes with science journalist Sarah DeWeerdt [READ NOW](   [TECHNOLOGY]( [Making Sense of Big Ocean Data]( Ocean conservation science is experiencing a data explosion—but can we utilize it properly? BY EMILY UNDERWOOD The North Atlantic right whale known as Snow Cone was tangled in fishing ropes and covered in parasites when researchers spotted her off the Massachusetts coast in September 2022. [Continue reading →]( Experience the endless possibilities and deep human connections that science offers [SUBSCRIBE TODAY](   Popular This Week [ARTS]( [Is AI Art Really Art?]( What it will mean to be moved by an AI’s mindless creativity. BY ED SIMON [Continue reading →]( [GEOSCIENCE]( [How It Feels to Surf the World’s Biggest Wave]( Riding Earth’s mighty forces in Nazaré, Portugal. BY KRISTEN FRENCH [Continue reading →]( [PHYSICS]( [How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Uncertainty]( I now realize Heisenberg and Schrödinger are less like physicists and more like therapists. BY PAUL M. SUTTER [Continue reading →]( [TECHNOLOGY]( [We’ve Got News for You About Supercharging Your Brain]( Today’s brain-computer interfaces perform medical miracles. Beyond the clinic is another story. BY SIDNEY PERKOWITZ [Continue reading →](   BEHIND THE SCENES [Sarah DeWeerdt Takes Us Behind “Bioluminescence Is Nature’s Love Light”]( Perhaps because the example of the firefly is so easy to call to mind—the availability bias in action—I was under the impression that bioluminescence on land was fairly common, if not slightly uncommon. Not so. The ability to emit your own light is rare on land but abundant undersea. How did this evolve? Sarah DeWeerdt wanted to know. While reporting for her recent Nautilus story, “[Bioluminescence Is Nature’s Love Light](,” she discovered that some species take advantage of the spectacle of bioluminescence in mating displays, the deep ocean analogue of a bird dancing and showing off its bright colors and striking feather patterns. “Each species emits light in its own distinctive pattern of dots, dashes, descending arcs, ascending lines, squiggles,” DeWeerdt writes, “a Morse code of diverse desires.” Species that do this speciate faster. “These mating displays,” [DeWeerdt said in our recent conversation](, “actually drive speciation and lead to more biodiversity in the sea.” The nuts and bolts of creatures making their own light captivated her. During her research, she said she got “in this sort of eddy” about the biochemistry of bioluminescence. “It’s based on a chemical reaction with two components,” she said. “One component is called a luciferin, and it’s a sort of protein that, when it’s broken apart, will emit a photon of light. The other component is an enzyme called a luciferase, and that’s the protein that does the breaking apart. When the two combine, the luciferin breaks apart and then emits the photon. And that’s happening over and over all at the same time. That produces the visual light.” How many times has this ability evolved? “Probably a hundred or more times. And yet there's only nine luciferins that are used by all these different species,” DeWeerdt said. The luciferases, on the other hand, are much more diverse. “Those have evolved in a lot of different ways in a lot of different species. That really interested me, the idea that maybe there’s only a limited number of ways to make this substrate, but there’s a bunch of different ways to break it apart. Then there’s limited ways to be able to produce light, but it's actually pretty easy to evolve, if so many species have evolved it independently.” In pointing out that scientists are still puzzled by why bioluminescent courtship drives the rapid evolution of new groups, DeWeerdt used a nice turn of phrase: “lightspeed speciation.” She had fun flexing her linguistic creativity in telling this story. As it turns out, a poem of hers on climate change will be published later this month. “I always end up incorporating a lot of science or the natural world into my work,” she said. “One of the great things about this assignment for Nautilus was an opportunity to engage in a little bit more word play, a little bit more of the literary approach than I sometimes have. That was really welcome.” [Watch here](. —Brian Gallagher, associate editor   [“Some companies fear the kind of scrutiny that projects like the Ocean Data Platform could bring.”]( [They turn off their location-transmitting systems when they don’t want to be tracked.](   More in Technology [A New Doorway to the Brain]( Neuroscientists can now explore the “wild west” in our heads in incredible detail—a boon to medicine and understanding what makes us tick. BY ELENA RENKEN The brain’s lifeline, its network of blood vessels, is like a tree, says Mathieu Pernot, deputy director of the Physics for Medicine Paris Lab. [Continue reading →]( [The Chess Cheat in the 21st Century]( If only the 18th-century hoaxer could see his “Mechanical Turk” now. BY JIM DAVIES Wolfgang von Kempelen, the 18th-century inventor and author, once claimed to have created a chess-playing robot, called the Mechanical Turk. [Continue reading →](   Today’s newsletter was written by Brian Gallagher   BECOME A SUBSCRIBER [A Surprise Delivered to Your Doorstep]( Your mystery issue of [Nautilus magazine]( provides an experience of the endless possibilities and deep human connections that science offers. Discover [deep, undiluted, narrative storytelling](that brings science into the most important conversations we are having today. [Order Now](   [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( Copyright © 2022 NautilusNext, All rights reserved. You were subscribed to the newsletter from nautil.us. Our mailing address is: NautilusNext 360 W 36th Street, 7S, New York, NY 10018 Don't want to hear from us anymore? Click here to [unsubscribe](.