Life & Biology
Every living thing, from a bacterium to a blue whale, is built from cells, runs on the same chemistry and descends from a common ancestor. These readings explain the machinery of life and the four-billion-year story of how it changed.
7 articles · about 27 minutes of reading
Life & Biology
Bacteria and Viruses
The smallest living things outnumber everything else combined and run the planet's chemistry. Most are harmless; some keep you alive; a few can kill you.
Article · 4 min read
Life & Biology
Dinosaurs and Mass Extinctions
For 165 million years dinosaurs ruled the land, then nearly all of them vanished in a single catastrophe. Their story is also the story of how life nearly ended five times.
Article · 3 min read
Life & Biology
DNA and Genes
Inside every one of your cells is a two-metre-long molecule carrying the complete instructions to build and run you. Here is how the code works.
Article · 4 min read
Life & Biology
Ecosystems and Food Webs
No living thing lives alone. Energy from the Sun flows through plants, grazers and predators, and the whole web can unravel when one thread is pulled.
Article · 4 min read
Life & Biology
Evolution
Every species alive, including ours, descends from earlier ones, shaped over millions of years by a simple process Darwin called natural selection. Here is how it works and how we know.
Article · 4 min read
Life & Biology
The Origin of Life
Around four billion years ago, on a hot young planet, chemistry became biology. Nobody knows exactly how, but the clues are piling up.
Article · 4 min read
Life & Biology
What Is Life? The Cell
Everything alive is made of cells, tiny bags of chemistry that eat, grow, copy themselves and die. You are a cooperative of about 37 trillion of them.
Article · 4 min read