Covering a flat surface with some pattern of geometric shapes with no overlaps or gaps is called tiling. Tiling shows up in many places, from the tiles on our kitchen floors to bees’ honeycombs. They generally have a pleasing, even fascinating, quality, and their regularity often expresses some natural harmony.

Have you ever wondered why a sunset on a beach is captivating, snowcapped mountains are breathtaking, and a valley filled with wildflowers is enchanting?

The job of physicists is to worry about numbers, but one number has perplexed physicists for more than a century. That number is 0.00729735256—approximately 1/137. This is the fine-structure constant. It appears everywhere in the equations of quantum physics.

Life requires many parameters in order to survive and thrive. The more data that are uncovered, the more evidence there is that Earth and its environs were specifically designed with the exact conditions needed for life. Remote sensing has unearthed data suggestive of just such design.