Chris Baraniuk

This article was originally published by Hakai Magazine.In the late 1700s, King George III glimpsed the future of shipping. Sir Charles Middleton, the comptroller of the British Royal Navy, approached the monarch with a vision. His pitch came with a demo—a specially modified model of a warship called the Bellona. The king’s eye soon fell on the shimmering copper plates that encased the miniature ship’s hull below the waterline.

This article was originally published in Hakai Magazine.Planet Earth used to be something like a cross between a deep freeze and a car crusher. During vast stretches of the planet’s history, oceans from pole to pole were covered with a blanket of ice a kilometer or so thick. Scientists call this “snowball Earth.”Some early animals managed to endure this frigid era from roughly 720 million to 580 million years ago, but they had their work cut out for them.