When I first visited the capital of Ireland in 1972, Dublin was a gray, cheerless city with beggars and litter everywhere. I couldn’t wait to get away.
The 72-inch Rosse telescope mirror • Photo by Geni (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Red-tailed hawk • Photo by Patrice Bouchard on Unsplash
Realities
Was up Mount Brandon yesterday, Ireland’s second highest mountain, with my friend Maurice. A temperature inversion held the clouds close to the earth, with just the peaks rising above. An island archipelago in a sea of white.
Coronal holes in the sun's atmosphere • (NASA/GSFC/SDO)
Smiling faces, orbs of fire
A grandchild’s crayon drawing decorates our fridge. A big round Sun with a smiley face.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
The day after ‘The Day After Tomorrow’
What’s an ordinary citizen to believe?
Artist's conception of the Cassini spacecraft arriving at Saturn • NASA/JPL (Public Domain)
Cassini at Saturn
Each of us is born at the center of the world.
Photo by Ayla Verschueren on Unsplash
Old dog, new trick: a statement of purpose
So here it is, Science Musings on the web, a regular meditation on humankind’s quest to understand the universe, including, of course, ourselves.
Photo by David Clode on Unsplash
A farewell — and a recommendation
Several weeks ago, “The New York Times” asked in the headline of its Tuesday science section — “Does Science Matter?” — then spent 16 pages suggesting an answer: Indeed it does, more than ever.
Photo by kabita Darlami on Unsplash
The chemical mind binds us together
As dumb as a goldfish.
"Summer Evening" by Childe Hassam (1886)
Leaving our print on the landscape
The Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut, is one of New England’s hidden treasures. Next time you are driving Interstate 95 between Boston and New York, pop off at Exit 70 and treat yourself to an exhilarating look at early 20th-century American Impressionist art.
A reconstruction of how Ötzi may have appeared in life • South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Chipping away at the iceman mystery
Remember the iceman? A dozen years ago, a couple of hikers found a mummified body in a melting glacier high in the Alps, on the border between Austria and Italy.