Have you ever sat on the bottom of a swimming pool and pondered your watery ceiling? Most of the surface is a sheet of light blue, and you can’t see through it, even though the water is clear. But right ...

After 30 days, the algae in the middle were still unicellular. As the scientists put algae from thicker and thicker rings under the microscope, however, they found larger clumps of cells. The very largest were wads of hundreds. But what ...