It was a long way to go for two-and-a-half minutes of darkness.
The total solar eclipse of 1999 • Image by Luc Viatour (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Photo by Alice Triquet on Unsplash
Astrology a ‘dirty puddle’
Recently, an astronomer at the Lick Observatory in California found in the institution’s library a horoscope cast by the 17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler for an Austrian nobleman, Hans Hannibal Huetter von Huetterhofen.
Photo by Shardar Tarikul Islam on Unsplash
Prying open Darwin’s ‘Black Box’
Some weeks ago I described certain South America ants that tend fungal gardens in underground chambers. They leave the nest to cut bits of leaves from nearby vegetation.
Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash
The ins and outs of how insects fly
Summertime, when the livin’ is buggy.
“Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru” by John Everett Millais (1846)
Two diplomats of the IQ wars
Some nations are rich, others are poor.
The Earth and its abstraction
Secret of not knowing
Twenty-two hundred years ago, in the city of Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile River, a fellow named Eratosthenes drew a circle on papyrus and said, “This is the Earth.”
Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash
Looking for ET online
It is a marriage made in heaven. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) and personal computers.
Photo by Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash
Fact filtering in the pursuit of truth
Last week this column took note of two explanations for the fossils known as ammonites. These animals in stone look like serpents curled upon themselves, or the tightly coiled horns of miniature rams.
Fossilized Hildoceras ammonites • Photo by Petr Hykš (CC BY-NC 2.0)
The ammonite’s fossilized legacy
A round gray stone sits on the window sill by my desk. The stone is cracked across the middle. It opens like a jewel box to reveal an ammonite, a fossilized sea creature shaped like the tightly coiled horn of a miniature ram.
The future Harry Hawker imagined • Photo by Thirdman from Pexels
Reach out and touch a cellular phone jerk
You have reached the office of Harry Hawker. You may leave a message at the beep.