On Stephen Hawking (1942-2018)
Stephen Hawking died today. What good did his science do? (Spoiler alert: Bunches.)
Concepts and Components in Redeeming Cultures
Our microbiology series begins today with a look at live and active Redeeming Cultures.
Live from Jupiter
Just before midnight yesterday morning, the spacecraft Juno entered its orbit of Jupiter after a 1,740 million mile journey that began almost five years ago. The probe is designed to research the tempestuous atmosphere of the planet, and to learn…
A Kilogram of Love
Deep in a vault in the Paris suburbs—behind three different keys, a climate-controlled safe, and two nested glass covers—sits a fist-sized piece of metal that weighs exactly a kilogram – and always has. How has it remained so perfectly weighted? Because this…
The Quantum Physics of The Berenstain Bears
It’s a terrible, horrible plot. The machinations of unfathomable secret societies with impossible technology have struck at our very past, changing reality all around us, warping the world until their dark plan finally came to fruition…they’ve finally and irrevocably changed…
Aliens vs. God
NASA is building a pretty strong case for the existence of aliens, but you could be forgiven for missing the news. Amid the excitement of New Horizons‘ flyby of dwarf-planet Pluto and the incredible photos it returned, it would be easy not to…
Pluto: Invisible made Visible
Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, and it was classified the 9th planet from the sun. Until 1994, we didn’t even know exactly how big it was. And the highest-resolution image we had of the planet was this, taken…
#FOMO: Be All There
My seven-month-old son’s day goes like this: Look around for the most interesting thing around him. It might be behind me! Stare at it intently (and hopefully put it in his mouth) for a few minutes until you figure it out. Go…
A Little Birdy Told Me…And Everybody Else
Yesterday, Twitter announced that it had made every tweet publicly available through a searchable index. After eight years, now a hundred billion tweets are ready for your viewing, 140 characters at a time. Everything from just setting up my twttr…