Are comets and asteroids periodic, and are we due? “Biological diversity is messy. It walks, it crawls, it swims, it swoops, it buzzes. But extinction is silent, and it has no […]
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Public apprehension about the health effects of mercury FAR exceeds the actual danger. Why, and what are the health impacts of that fear!?
“What was scattered, gathers.What was gathered, blows away.” –Heraclitus When you think of our Solar System, you think of planets (and other object) orbiting our central star, with moons (or […]
Scientists work on it, it’s consistent with science, and it hopes to be the biggest scientific breakthrough of all. But it’s missing one key ingredient. “As of now, string theorists […]
The two best-explored outer Solar System worlds orbit one another. But no one was prepared for what New Horizons saw. “Just as a Chihuahua is still a dog, these ice dwarfs […]
And the method teaches us just how far Pluto is from actual planethood. “Some kind of celestial event. No — no words. No words to describe it. Poetry! They should have sent […]
If you see a picture of a planet, can you identify which of the eight it is? “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes […]
Happy Birthday To The Person Who Literally Brought Us The Entire Universe “Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.” –Edwin Hubble As […]
How we went from our Milky Way, alone, to the entire Universe. “Gamow was fantastic in his ideas. He was right, he was wrong. More often wrong than right. Always […]
It’s not just leaps and breakthroughs, but a way of thinking and a way of life. Are you in? “When I say, ‘I love you,’ it’s not because I want […]
Mars used to be a warm, wet world, filled with oceans, rivers, and maybe even life. Here’s what happened. “Studying whether there’s life on Mars or studying how the universe […]
The recycling firm that had an Apple I computer dropped on its doorstep is now looking for the mystery woman that unknowingly donated the legendary piece of technology.
And what technology will it take for us to get there? “Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on […]
How the Solar Eclipse of 1919 spelled the end for Newton. “Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate. One thing at least is certain, light has weight. One thing […]
An incredible live-blog of an incredible event. “It’s becoming clear that in a sense the cosmos provides the only laboratory where sufficiently extreme conditions are ever achieved to test new […]
Two recent examples from The New York Times, one from a columnist and one in an editorial, illustrate the danger of news media coverage of risk that is alarmist, incomplete, and inaccurate.
Is it possible that our problems indicate a flaw in the theory of gravity? “I soon became convinced… that all the theorizing would be empty brain exercise and therefore a […]
Four billion years ago, the Universe was a different place. What would we have seen? “In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night […]
News coverage of risk that plays up how scary things sound and plays down or leaves out anything that moderates the fear does real and serious harm.
There are three things an idea must do to become a full-fledged scientific theory. How does the Multiverse stack up? “It’s hard to build models of inflation that don’t lead […]
That picture of you at the Royal Observatory astride the Greenwich Meridian? It’s a lie.
Why look for rare, precious metals on Earth when you can find them here? “Well, this is a thing unheard of. An Elf would go underground, where a Dwarf dare […]
How tides, gravity and lava give Io the youngest surface in the Solar System. “The crust, being so thin, must bend, if, over wide areas, it becomes loaded with glacial […]
According to relativity, there’s no universal frame of reference. But the Big Bang gave us one anyway. “The slow philosophy is not about doing everything in tortoise mode. It’s less […]
Throwback Thursday: How Dark Matter’s #1 Competitor Died The only way out is to modify the laws of gravity, and our best observations rule those modifications out. “The discrepancy between […]
“The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel.”
Now that New Horizons has flown by the Plutonian system, can it be considered a planet after all? “Words are the source of misunderstandings.” –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Back in 1930, […]
Could everything we’ve put together about science turn out to be wrong? “Revolutions are something you see only in retrospect.” –Alan Greenspan We’re always on the lookout for the next […]
The most important lessons about Earth come from looking outward. “We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.” […]
Product design might be one answer to the mounting e-waste dilemma Americans are facing.