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David Keith, director of the Energy and Environmental Systems Group at the University of Calgary, says geoengineering should be “a central part of how we think about managing climate risk over the next 100 years.”

Nobel-Prize winning physicist William Phillips admits that “laser cooling” is a somewhat confusing concept. How can light energy, generally thought of as a source of heat, be used to cool […]

To spare the feelings of the good people of his hometown, Sinclair Lewis invented a fictional state as the setting for his novels

Last week the NSF Science Indicators report was released, triggering more dramatic calls to action and overstated warnings from commentators about the alleged decline of science in American society. This […]

In a two hour special, PBS Frontline tackles what the award winning series calls the most important issue of our time. (Promo above.) The special program airs Tuesday night in […]

The word genius tends to get thrown around pretty liberally these days, especially when everyone from Bob Dylan to Mike Myers has been tagged with the superlative.  But in an […]

His fellow physicist Steven Weinberg says the Nobel committee has “fleeced” Freeman Dyson. But Dyson prefers the infamy of never having won.

At last, a new Ian McEwan novel: Solar. The author’s website recites a list of reviews; there are so many. Tucked among them is a nod to a blog post […]

The amount of money hedge funds make is only surpassed by the amount of secrecy surrounding how they make it.  To pull back the curtain on these financial wizards, Big […]

It’s foreign-born scientists that keep the U.S. winning all those Nobel Prizes. But we can’t rely on their superior education forever.

In a new regular column over at DesmogBlog, Chris Mooney elaborates on the arguments first offered here. We should applaud Gore, writes Chris, but we also need to draw on […]

Former US President Bill Clinton took a diplomatic route this weekend and poked fun at Democrats, Republicans and himself at the Gridiron Club’s annual dinner.

In his Big Think interview, Freeman Dyson gladly discusses nearly the entire twentieth century: both its wonders (including almost miraculous advances in physics) and its horrors (for which, he says, […]

What is a collateralized debt obligation (CDO) anyway? And why did it get the United States into so much trouble? According to NYU economist Robert Engle, CDOs are “wonderful creations” […]

We love Ian McEwan. We also love when esteemed literary publications surprise us with criticism of a writer so adored. Indeed, whatever one thinks of Solar, the new McEwan novel, […]

I would put Albert Einstein among the 20 top people who have ever lived, in terms of their impact on our way of life. Kings, queens, and emperors have come […]

Readers in Washington, DC will find this event, open to the public, of strong interest: The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Meteorological Society (AMS), and […]

Love. Sex. Space. Coke. (Coke?) Discretion. Indiscretion. Family. Fame. Privacy. Puppies. The Rolling Stones. One man’s happiness is, axiomatically, not another’s, and so the riddle of what brings us peace […]

The beleaguered chairman of the UN’s Nobel Prize-winning climate change panel, Rajendra Pachauri, has defended the panel’s credibility, calling climate skeptics’ criticism “skulduggery”.

On Tuesday, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said that the financial crisis that triggered our current recession was “by far the greatest financial crisis, globally, ever.” That’s right, even […]

Nobel Prize winning economist Vernon Smith says the question is, how do you achieve just a bit without getting too much?

We forgot the lesson of the ‘roaring 20’s’ in the case of the housing markets and that’s what caused a recurrence; you see of a lot of the same conditions […]

As a genre, science fiction could potentially wield more influence over its followers than any other cultural force. Through film, television, and comics, it has inspired countless socially-awkward young people […]

Can Wall Street hold it together in 2010 after having its best year since 2003? Six reputed economists opine.

Carol Greider, 2009 Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, recounts how it felt to get the big call from Stockholm and predicts its future impact on her work.

For this week’s installment of What Went Wrong? we bring you an interview with the Nobel Prize winning economist, Vernon Smith. Having studied bubbles inside and out, he has said […]

I joined a panel yesterday on BBC Radio’s “World Have Your Say” that included former Nobel Peace prize winner Jody Williamson to talk about President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Speech. […]

For Elinor Ostrom, the path to the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics was fraught with challenges, but a commitment to great work and a group of rare friends, proved the […]

A conversation with the Nobel Prize-winning author of “The Museum of Innocence.”

A conversation with the Johns Hopkins University molecular biologist and co-winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine.