Associated Press news report: “Repent, The End of the World May be Nearer Than You Think, Astrophysicist Calculates.”
Articles from December 2020
Photo by Kyle Gregory Devaras on Unsplash
Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash
It’s been 40 years now since Kinsey lit the fuse
When Alfred Kinsey’s “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” came out in 1948, I was 11 years old and just beginning a long fascination with the mystery of mysteries.
Computer visualization of a high-energy particle collision • McCauley, Thomas; Taylor, Lucas; for the CMS Collaboration (CC BY-SA 3.0)
What is the Higgs boson anyway?
American high-energy particle physicists want $10 billion of the taxpayer’s money to build the Superconducting Supercollider, a colossal particle-accelerating machine in a 50-mile-long tunnel under the Texas prairie.
Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam"
Let the poets and artists teach us what science can’t
Quick. Give a brief definition of PCR (polymerase chain reaction). Now do the same for ESP (extrasensory perception).
Photo by Marek Okon on Unsplash
On a voyage 50 years ago, Steinbeck saw nature’s unity
On the afternoon of March 11, 1940, the Western Flyer, a 76-foot fishing boat, prepared to leave Monterey harbor in California. The boat was chartered by a writer who would later win the Nobel prize for literature, and his best friend, a marine biologist.
Mus musculus (Public Domain)
Will the day yet come when lab mice strike back?
Coming soon to a theater near you: “Attack of the Killer Transgenic Microchip Mice.”
Fontana Dam, North Carolina • Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (Public Domain)
Industrial age artifacts need not be eyesores
In the autumn of 1728, Samuel Johnson, future author of the famous dictionary, rode with his father from his birthplace at Lichfield in the English Midlands to the university town of Oxford. He was 19 years old.
Image by rafluxeloy from Pixabay
When nature’s clocks tick out of tune
A wind in the willows. Not just any wind and not just any willows. It was a warm spring wind, full of the flavors of the south. And the willows were pussy willows, in the first soft flush of catkins.
E. coli bacteria • Photo by Janice Haney Carr, National Escherichia, Shigella, Vibrio Reference Unit at CDC, USCDCP on Pixnio
Some bacteria sniff their way through life
Bacteria have noses. Well, not noses exactly, but scent-sensitive spots where a nose should be, up front, heading into the wind.
Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash
Searching for alien beings is like playing the lottery
Are we alone in the universe? Answering this question is the goal of the scientific project called SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.