On the evening of January 4 [2003], Saturn passed in front of the Crab Nebula.
Articles from September 2022
Detail of a Hubble Space Telescope mosaic image of the Crab Nebula • NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University)
“Galileo Facing the Roman Inquisition” by Cristiano Banti (1857)
We wish he had been more heroic
On the evening of January 7, 1610, Galileo Galilei, citizen of Florence and mathematician of the University of Padua, turned his telescope to the planet Jupiter. He saw the planet as a round disk against a background of three tiny stars, all in a row.
Photo by Oliver Sjöström on Unsplash
Finding science at the shoreline
The great 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell said, “It is a universal condition of the enjoyable that the mind must believe in the existence of a law, and yet have a mystery to move about in.”
Photo by Ralph
To our rodent kin, an ode
Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous mousie,
Astir within the Christmas housie!
Photo by Wolfgang Mennel on Unsplash
Can we extend our rights to animals?
Oh, dear, what to eat?
Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash
Chalk at the core of good geology
I spent my childhood clapping erasers in the playground after school.
The Kununurra region of Western Australia, where zebra rock is found • Photo by Reise-Line (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Nature illustrates its law and chaos
My daughter, a geologist, gave me zebra stones for my birthday.
Photo by Magic K
Can’t we all just forget the lawn?
In 1941, when I was 5 years old, my parents built a house in the rural suburbs of Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was the classic American dream house, a two-story modified Cape, with a white picket fence around the backyard, a badminton court, a victory garden, and, of course, a lawn.
Webb Space Telescope image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 • NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
The big questions are still out there
Last week’s column mentioned in passing the medieval European liberal-arts curriculum, required of every university student who sought a bachelor’s degree.
Detail of the Eagle Nebula as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope • NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Poetry in interstellar motion
Each of the three books of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” ends with the same words: “the stars.”