You may have heard about the public library brouhaha in Seabrook, N.H.
Astronomy
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
A mystery long ago and far away
When we are standing under the stars, the sky seems unmistakably two dimensional — just up there, like the light-flecked ceiling of the terrestrial ballroom.
Microscopic structures within Martian meteorite ALH 84001 • NASA (Public Domain)
It’s a small world after all
Last week’s announcement [in 1996] by NASA of evidence of life on Mars was top-of-the-front-page news in this remote corner of Ireland.
Artist's impression of a supermassive black hole • ESO/L. Calçada (CC BY 4.0)
The monster in the Milky Way
Every child at some time in his life has written his address this way: Billy Smith, 426 Oak Ave., Boston, Massachusetts, USA, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, Universe.
Artist's impression of the Galileo probe entering the Jovian atmosphere • NASA/Ames Research Center/Ken Hodges (Public Domain)
A little poetry with the facts, M’am
Most people who make a living communicating science spend long hours reading the scientific literature. In a typical week, I peruse several books and a dozen journals.
Martian meteorite ALH84001 • NASA/JSC (Public Domain)
Messages from space
How do we gather the stuff of the universe for study here on Earth?
Image by Pablo Carlos Budassi (CC BY-SA 4.0)
It all adds up to a very Big Bang
“Professor, that stuff you spoke of in class this morning — about the beginning of the universe…”
Comet Hyakutake in 1996 • NASA/Bill Ingalls (Public Domain)
In the beginning there was a comet
We watched the long slide of Comet Hyakutake from the dark southeastern sky, up across the north pole, into the light of the setting sun.
Princess Aura and Flash Gordon as portrayed by Priscilla Lawson and Buster Crabbe (1936)
And they’ll all speak English
If memory serves me right, my first true love was Princess Aura, daughter of Ming the Merciless of the planet Mongo.
The Hubble Deep Field photograph • R. Williams (STScI), the Hubble Deep Field Team and NASA/ESA
The universe of the mind
By now, you have probably seen the Hubble Deep Field photograph of the early universe. Many newspapers and news magazines have published this extraordinary image of the most distant galaxies ever observed.