FOLLOW A THREAD
Discoveries that connect.
Take a reading path through a shared question. Each stop has its own explanation and sources, and you can wander away whenever another connection catches your attention.
Patterns that nature makes
A shape can be the visible trace of a process. Start with Saturn’s persistent atmospheric wave, then explore the sound produced by moving sand and the microscopic pigment structures that absorb light in deep-sea fish. Each page explains the mechanism and the limits of the evidence. These examples invite a closer look at the physical processes behind an unexpected appearance.
Around Saturn’s north pole, a jet stream follows a six-sided path roughly 30,000 kilometres across. Clouds and vortices move through the region while the immense wave keeps its recognizable geometry.
EarthThe singing sandsAt Great Sand Dunes in Colorado, an avalanche of dry sand can produce a sustained low hum or boom as countless grains move together down a steep slip face.
NatureUltra-black deep-sea fishAcross several unrelated deep-sea lineages, densely arranged pigment structures absorb nearly every photon that reaches the skin, hiding the animal’s shape from bioluminescent searchlights.
Materials with a long story
An object’s material can lead to a question its appearance leaves unanswered. Harvard’s pigment collection helps conservators investigate the substances artists used. Oxford’s sealed dry-pile apparatus raises a different question: how long can a tiny electrical supply keep an experiment moving? Follow the source records to see where the construction is documented and where uncertainty remains.
More than 2,500 pigment samples at Harvard preserve the physical ingredients of color for conservation research, teaching, and the study of how artworks were made.
EngineeringThe Clarendon Dry PileInstalled at Oxford in 1840, two dry-pile batteries still drive a suspended metal sphere back and forth between a pair of bells at roughly two swings per second.