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At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Digital Life initiative endeavours to create high-quality 3D digital models of living organisms – especially those on the brink of extinction. This modern Noah’s Ark is just one of the ways humanity is digitising a world in ecological peril. But what does this impulse, combined with the rise of ‘simulation theory’, say about us? Is the idea that we can digitally preserve and simulate biology, or that we already exist in a computer-simulated reality, merely a way to comfort ourselves as we drive our world further toward ecological collapse? In a collage pulled together from the world of digitisation, the experimental short Our Ark ponders whether these notions of parallel simulated worlds are a means of offering ourselves ‘solace in the face of paralysis’.
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Thinkers and theories
A rare female scholar of the Roman Empire, Hypatia lived and died as a secular voice
5 minutes
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Architecture
The celebrated architect who took inspiration from sitting, waiting and contemplating
29 minutes
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Anthropology
Why are witchcraft accusations so common across human societies?
4 minutes
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Wellbeing
Born in China, Zee seeks a gender-affirming life in the American Midwest
11 minutes
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Chemistry
Why do the building blocks of life possess a mysterious symmetry?
12 minutes
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Rituals and celebrations
A whale hunt is an act of prayer for an Inuit community north of the Arctic Circle
8 minutes
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Cosmology
Tiny, entangled universes that form or fizzle out – a theory of the quantum multiverse
11 minutes
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Rituals and celebrations
A beginner’s guide to a joyful Persian tradition of spring renewal and rebirth
3 minutes
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Astronomy
The history of astronomy is a history of conjuring intelligent life where it isn’t
34 minutes