Plus a bonus: perhaps the single most important achievement to all of humanity. “What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the Moon, […]
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We all feel bad for Pluto, but it had its demotion coming. “I have announced this star as a comet, but since it is not accompanied by any nebulosity and, further, […]
More than 400 years after Galileo’s first telescopic observations, we’re more certain than ever that the Earth is moving through space. How do we know? “Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and […]
The only way out is to modify the laws of gravity, and new constraints rule those modifications out. “The discrepancy between what was expected and what has been observed has […]
How a “New Star” appearing in 1572 paved the way for us to truly begin understanding our Universe. “I conclude, therefore, that this star is not some kind of comet […]
As part of this week’s Festival of the Planets celebration, University College London has made available to the public a selection of historic images from its archive. Included are glimpses of the surface of Venus.
Saturn, Venus, Mars, Mercury and Jupiter will all be visible in the August night skies, as will the annual Perseid meteors. A number of nebulas will also be easy to find among the constellations.
If we knew all we do about math and physics, but had never seen the heavens, what would we conclude? “Both the solutions must be rejected, and as these are […]
Why the kind of knowledge you get by asking the Universe questions about itself is the most valuable type of knowledge there is. “I’m also uncomfortable with dogmatic believers; to my […]
If we scaled the entire Universe’s history from the Big Bang until now to be “one Universe year,” what would our future look like? “The way to love anything is to […]
The original observation was effectively a lack of an observation. The conclusion was dinosaurs.
While recent focus has been on finding an Earth-like exoplanet in a system’s “Goldilocks zone,” one astrophysicist suggests that that zone might be made wider by taking other atmospheric conditions, such as greenhouse gas amounts, into account.
These are some of the highlights of the last three years in the life of our star.
That would make it about ten times older than the oldest accepted examples of cartography
On May 24, 1813, just months after publishing Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen went to a show in search of her female hero. ”I dare say Mrs. D[arcy] will be […]
Located 1,200 light-years from here, in the northern constellation Lyra, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has discovered two planets whose size and orbits make them the exoplanets most similar to Earth yet.
The U.S. is in a space race with China, it just doesn’t know it yet. How many Chinese taikonauts have to return from outer space before we recognize this? Ever since […]
1. Every Big Idea Was First A Crazy Idea Fred Guterl, executive editor of Scientific American, does a nice job of highlighting some of the crazy ideas presented at this year’s TED […]
A small annoyance that’s more consequential than it sounds: In the same-sex marriage debate, heterosexual, male-female couples are regularly described by judges, pundits, and advocates alike as “opposite sex” couples. […]
America’s nuclear waste is all dressed up in dry cask storage, with nowhere to go. In 1987, the Yucca Mountain, Nevada, was designated as a “deep geologic dispersal” site for […]
“Now” trends are those with high energy and can be leveraged in the present; “Next” trends will begin to manifest towards the end of 2013 and gain traction through 2014; “Future” trends are fringe signals that will play out in 2015 and beyond.
NASA has agreed to fund a study into whether or not mining asteroids for precious metals and minerals is economically sound. Surely not at the moment, but it might be in the future…
The sight of a grown man trying to stuff a bobbing plastic doll into a jar of what he claims to be his own urine is a sad thing, but […]
This is probably your last chance to see Venus cross directly in front of the sun as the event will not reoccur until 2117. Scientists want to gather data to find exoplanets similar to Earth.
By measuring the planet’s atmosphere as light from the sun refracted against it, scientists will be better equipped to find and analyze the composition of planets outside our solar system.
The first time I listened to Pinkerton, Weezer’s second studio album, I hated it. And so did almost everyone else. Rolling Stone readers ranked it as the third worst album […]
In June of this year, you can see Venus pass across the surface of the sun. The event, which will not occur again until 2117, will help planet hunters to find foreign worlds similar to Earth.
Art theft is a terrible problem worldwide. Aside from robbing the public of enjoying the great works of the past, art theft often leads to damage to the art and […]
Why would so many people take time off from their smart phones to watch the Transit of Venus through a telescope? According to Bill Nye, it is our human desire to explore. If we ever lose that desire, we’re not going to move forward as a species.
As I’m writing this post, NASA’s latest Mars mission – the Mars Science Laboratory, also known as Curiosity – is just hours away from its destination. By the time you […]