Comet Halley is destined to disappoint a lot of people. Maybe it is time to hear from someone who has not been disappointed.
Articles from August 2019
Halley's Comet in 1986 • Kuiper Airborne Observatory (Public Domain)
Nevado del Ruiz in 2013 • Photo by Adrian Jacobo Restrepo Granada (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Life precarious on crustal cracks
For a year the mountain had been unquiet. Smoke, rumblings, and tremors signaled that pressure was building inside the peak. Then, on the evening of Wednesday, November 13, Nevado del Ruiz blew its top.
Gavia immer, or Common Loon • Photo by John Picken (CC BY 2.0)
For the loon, a cry of distress
In autumn Thoreau listened for the sound of the loon on Walden Pond. He called it “a wild sound, heard afar and suited to the wildest lake.” Another time he heard “a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like a wolf than any bird.” We need, said Thoreau, “the tonic of wildness.” The loon’s voice was part of that tonic.
Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash
A wisp of matter
The neutrino is the spook of the world of subatomic particles. It has no electric charge, and possibly no mass. It is a mere whiff of a particle, a whisper of matter, a sweet nothing. The neutrino is only barely lodged in the realm of existence.
Photo by Benjamin Voros on Unsplash
August’s shower of space dust
If it is good luck to see a shooting star, then this could be your lucky night. This is the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, the richest show of the year. If the night is clear and you are patient and can get far enough from the city lights to find dark skies, you might see a few dozen meteors per hour tonight.
The eggshell Earth • National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Public Domain)
Consider the drift
Humans have an appetite for the fabulous. Once that appetite was satisfied by unicorns, hippogriffs, mermaids, or monsters. Today, more often than not, it is satisfied by UFOs, abominable snowmen, and other pseudo-scientific phenomena.
Photo by Ying Wu on Unsplash
Giant panda’s a bear after all
Here is a surprise. The giant panda is a bear, and not — as many zoologists supposed — a raccoon. But wait, I am getting ahead of myself.
The A, B, and Z DNA in cross-section, modeled on computer (Public Domain)
The shapes of life
In his autobiographical book The Double Helix, James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, tells how he came to think of the helix as the fundamental structure for that molecule. “The idea (of the helix) was so simple,” he says, “that it had to be right.”
Your distant cousin • Photo by Fructibus (CC0)
My very distant cousin, the turnip
This much is certain: The turnip is my cousin. The hummingbird and the humpback whale are twigs on my family tree. Bacteria and viruses are my kith and kin.
Photo by Luca Baggio on Unsplash
The Milky Way rises like a gathering mist
For the poets of ancient China, the Milky Way was the Celestial River, “a river of stars turning in the jade vault.” Or alternatively, it was “the Great Path without a gate” that passed between heaven and Earth.