Stories by Jennifer Ouellette

Just a reminder for those of you in the Chicago area: I’ll be speaking Monday July 16th, 6 PM, at the Harold Washington Library Center.

As you read this, we are flying home to Los Angeles after an exhausting but exhilarating trip: 10 days, 2 continents, 3 flights, 2 trains, 4 hotels, 18 car rides, 7 panel discussions, 3 interviews, and 5 lectures between the two of us.  (The circles under my eyes are now saucers.) First stop: New York [...]

First, a few housekeeping announcements: Those in New York City today can see me at the World Science Festival’s Science and Story Cafe at 1:30 PM, where I’ll be hanging out with neuroscientists David Eagleman and Dean Buonomano.

One of the first things we learn in school about physics — along with Newton’s laws of motion — is that all objects fall at the same rate, regardless of their mass.

The coat of arms of a 15th century Italian noble family by the name of Borromeo featured three interlocking circles. Among the many interpretations, it can be said to represent the inter-marriages that had bound the Borromeos inseparably to two other noble families — a strong, stable alliance that served the family well over many [...]

It’s the physics story that keeps on going and going and going, just like the Energizer Bunny. BICEP2 is still generating headlines as the Backlash to the Big Bang Discovery Gathers Steam.

By a quirk of the calendar, this week’s linkfest falls on my birthday. And the Internet gave me an early gift: I made a list — Eight of Twitter’s coolest geeks.

Wednesday night I joined Jon Ronson, Carl Zimmer, Ophira Eisenberg, and Sarah Schlesinger in Brooklyn to tell stories in celebration of the Story Collider’s fourth anniversary.

Jen-Luc Piquant was transfixed along with everyone else this week over those beached dead whales in Newfoundlound: will they or won’t they explode?

To be or not to be? Audiences have thrilled to these immortal lines for centuries, identifying with Hamlet's existential dilemma. William Shakespeare was a master at evoking powerful emotions in people, and now audience members have the chance to influence a performance in turn, via various biofeedback techniques.

Astronauts on a routine repair mission for the Hubble Space Telescope find themselves coping with more than they bargained for in the pulse-pounding opening sequence of Alfonso Cuaron's Oscar-winning film, Gravity.

It was a busy week on the shameless self-promotion front. I chatted with Sonali Kolhatkar of Uprising Rradio (KPFK) about my book, Me, Myself and Why — there’s even video.

This week fans of the night sky and space exploration celebrated the Birth of Human Spaceflight, with Yuri’s Night. Related (kinda): “You can’t take the sky from me.” The First Instagram From Space Is Of An Astronaut In A Firefly T-Shirt.

There were several physics news items this week, coming on the heels of the APS April Meeting in Savannah Georgia. Like a BOSS: Astronomers make the most precise measurement yet of the expanding universe.

Support is growing for a decades-old physics idea suggesting that localized episodes of disordered brain activity help keep the overall system in healthy balance

The biggest physics news this week is the announcement of possible hints of dark matter in Fermi data, namely, a curious excess of gamma-ray light coming from the center of our galaxy.  Could this be a sighting of dark matter turning visible at the center of our galaxy?

This week there continued to be Ripples From the Big Bang. Sean Carroll discussed When Nature Looks Unnatural: “Ultimately it's nature, not us, that decides what's natural.” And Matt Strassler was back, explaining Which Parts of the Big Bang Theory are Reliable, and Why.  Also: The gravitational-wave finding would strengthen case for multiverse and all [...]

Really, there was only one physics story this week — or at least one that dominated the headlines, and deservedly so. I’m talking about the exciting major announcement from the BICEP2 collaboration (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization 2), rumored last week, that pretty much lived up to the hype — they announced the possible [...]

For those who don’t hang out much on Google+ (and also for those who do), the Time Lord (a.k.a. Caltech physicist Sean M. Carroll) and I did a live hangout with Read Science, co-hosted by my fellow SciAm blogger Joanne Manaster.

Jen-Luc Piquant noticed a couple of news items this week on the latest research into the physics of so-called flying snakes. It just so happens I wrote about this back in 2010, prior to joining Scientific American‘s blog network, so it’s worth reviving parts of that original post here, along with the new work.  You [...]

NOTE: Jen-Luc Piquant is delighted to feature a guest post today by fellow science writer Amanda Gefter, author of the wonderful new book, Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn: A Father, a Daughter, the Meaning of Nothing, and the Beginning of Everything I'm sure every freshly published author struggles with the ungainly demands of self-promotion.

We’ve been a bit crazed this week plugging the new book, as authors are wont to do. I chatted with Chris Mooney on Mother Jones’ Inquiring Minds podcast on how the science of self is exploring not just who we are, but if we are.

It’s been a busy week. Tuesday evening, I gave a lecture based on the new book (Me, Myself, and Why: Searching for the Science of Self) at Seattle’s Town Hall.  And later today, I’ll be appearing at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, DC, so if you’re in the area around 3:30 PM, stop in [...]

We’re back from our travels with some nifty new physics: the best of the backlog of stuff we perused upon our return from that mysterious Land With No Internet Connection.