Stories by Steve Mirsky

General Jay Raymond, Commander of Air Force Space Command, talks about keeping watch over space and cyber.

Getting around the sun in 2017 was a memorable trip.

SETI is still scanning the skies for other galactic citizens

Biochemist Sylvia Tara talks about her book The Secret Life of Fat: The Science behind the Body's Least-Understood Organ and What It Means for You.

Rosemarie Truman, CEO of the Center for Advancing Innovation, says a better system of governance for federally funded inventions could lead to many more good ones becoming commercialized.

Smart cookies remember their buried treasure

At the World Conference of Science Journalists in October, Nathan Myhrvold, co-founder of Intellectual Ventures, charged innovation outfits with changing the lives of the world's most disadvantaged.

Journalist Erik Vance talks about his first book, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain’s Ability to Deceive, Transform and Heal.

Caleb Scharf, director of Columbia University’s Astrobiology Center talks about his latest book, The Zoomable Universe: An Epic Tour through Cosmic Scale, from Almost Everything to Almost Nothing, and the OSIRIS-REx space mission.

SETI pioneer Jill Tarter and Berkeley researcher Dan Werthimer talk about how the discovery of nearby exoplanets is inspiring new efforts to gain info about these galactic neighbors.  

On National Bison Day, a look at the role the Bronx played in reestablishing herds of bison on the American plains.   

How chicken farming got juiced

Stephen Asma, professor of philosophy at Columbia College Chicago and author of On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears, talks about our enduring fascination with monsters.

Award-winning journalist Maryn McKenna talks about her latest book, Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats. (Part 2 of 2)

Award-winning journalist Maryn McKenna talks about her latest book, Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats. (Part 1 of 2)

By playing the online game Foldit, players might help design an enzyme that can stop aflatoxins from making millions sick.

Under certain circumstances squirrels will bury all of the same kind of nut near one another, a mnemonic strategy known as chunking.

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded jointly to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson for developing cryo-electron microscopy that can determine high-resolution structures of biomolecules in solution.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution.

The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded today to Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne for their contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.

The Nobel Prize in Physics goes to Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded today to Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young for discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling circadian rhythms.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2017 was awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young for discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling circadian rhythms.

An extinct monster fish shows that, yes, evolution could be that crazy