Ulfur Atli
The mountain range that determines Asia’s weather — and its wars
The canyon begins at the bend. For fifty kilometers, the Yarlung Tsangpo River falls two thousand meters through the eastern Himalayas — dropping faster...
Why coastlines are getting longer the more precisely you measure them
The CIA World Factbook puts the United Kingdom's coastline at 12,429 kilometres. The World Resources Institute puts it at 19,717. The discrepancy — roughly...
The invisible border that splits the Internet in two
In 2021, American diplomats fanned out across Asia with an unusual message. Not about treaties, not about tariffs, not about troop deployments. They were...
The antibiotic resistance crisis: why the world is quietly running out...
In June 2018, the US Food and Drug Administration approved plazomicin — brand name Zemdri — for complicated urinary tract infections caused by carbapenem-resistant...
Why nuclear fusion has been 20 years away for 70 years...
On December 5, 2022, scientists at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California fired 192 laser beams at a target the size of a...
The science of infectious disease: why pandemics follow predictable patterns
Measles, in a dense urban setting, has an R0 of roughly 15. One infected person, in a fully susceptible population, seeds fifteen others. In...
The geopolitics of the deep sea: why the ocean floor is...
In December 2025, the Chinese research vessel Shi Yan 6 was operating in the Indian Ocean inside an exploration zone contracted to India by...
The slow death of the world’s largest aquifer
On a summer morning in western Kansas, a centre-pivot irrigation system makes its slow mechanical circuit across a quarter-section of corn. It moves like...
How much plastic is really recycled?
That recycling symbol is not a promise - Why the number you've seen doesn't mean what you think it does
Before it held your shampoo,...
Why the Arctic is becoming the world’s most contested real estate
The climate part is over. It happened. The Arctic is now warming nearly four times faster than the global average — the fastest sustained...