Astrophysics

A couple of years ago, one of my thesis mentors sought visually impaired scientists working at a major space science agency in the United States.

At a 1990 conference on cosmology, I asked attendees, who included folks like Stephen Hawking, Michael Turner, James Peebles, Alan Guth and Andrei Linde, to nominate the smartest living physicist.

The latest data from the Planck satellite suggest the highly touted finding of spacetime ripples may have been mistaken
 

An internal study finds that female-led proposals to use the in-demand device are less likely to be selected

The leader of the James Webb Space Telescope must have clearance that allows access to the highest level of classified information, according to a NASA want ad

Astronomers have identified the Milky Way’s cosmic address—inside the supercluster Laniakea, which means “immense heaven” in Hawaiian. Clara Moskowitz reports

Books and recommendations from Scientific American

We’re used to thinking of the space between the stars as void, bereft of all but the most sparsely distributed atoms and molecules, or the occasional microscopic grain of silicon or carbon dust.

An underground neutrino detector has found particles produced by the fusion of two protons in the sun’s core

This post is one in a series covering, and expanding on, topics in the book The Copernicus Complex (Scientific American/FSG).           The conversation usually goes like this: Do you think we’re alone in the universe?

The detection of the chemical signature of a relic star brings long-awaited evidence for massive stellar ancestors

As readers of this blog know, late last spring I spoke at a cool conference in England called How the Light Gets In, where I hung out with all kinds of professional reality-ponderers.