The Surreal Task of Landing on a Comet
On November 12th 2014 the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission will eject the small robotic lander Philae on a trajectory that should take it down to the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (or 67P/C-P for short).
Crash Analysis: How SpaceShipTwo's Feathered Tails Work
The cause of the deadly crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo on Friday remains unknown, but the commercial spaceplane's feathered reentry system looks to have been involved.
Physics Week in Review: November 1, 2014
Hope everyone enjoyed their Halloween festivities. Here’s a few other related links: The ghostly glow of St. Elmo’s fire: it works the same way that a neon light glows. The Levitating Halloween Pumpkin with a superconductor inside. Bonus: More Conceptual Physics Halloween Costumes.This year, go out as The Holographic Principle!
'Theory of Everything' Brilliantly Dramatizes Paradox of Modern Science
I met Stephen Hawking in the summer of 1990, when I spent five days in northern Sweden at a conference attended by 30 or so leading cosmologists.
Failure to Launch Is Always An Option
Do not try this at home. A Russian Proton-M launch goes wrong – and it can happen to anyone (wait for the shock wave). A rocket is a controlled bomb.
Complex Life Owes Its Existence To Parasites?
Is complex life rare in the cosmos? The idea that it could be rests on the observation that the existence of life like us – with large, energy hungry, complicated cells – may be contingent on a number of very specific and unlikely factors in the history of the Earth.
Hundreds of Comets Seen Orbiting Distant Solar System
The “exocomets” swarming around Beta Pictoris mirror those seen in our own solar system, but for a few surprising differences.
Recent Lunar Discoveries Reveal a "New Moon"
Think you know about the Moon? I did, but then I started reading ‘The New Moon: Water, Exploration, and Future Habitation‘ (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and realized that my knowledge amounted to a teensy scrap of lunar dust.
Surfer-Physicist Offers Alternative to String Theory, Academia
In 2007 Garrett Lisi was a 39-year-old physicist, unaffiliated with any institution, toiling in obscurity on what he called "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything,” which could account for all of nature’s forces.
Did Jesus Save the Klingons?
If or when we make contact with extraterrestrials, the effect on our religious sensibilities will be profound, says astronomer David Weintraub
Red Planet Spacecraft Prepare for Rare Comet Encounter
NASA's rovers and orbiters at Mars will witness a close encounter with a comet on October 19, an event that happens once every million years
Star-Forming Clouds May Spit Out Life’s Building Blocks
Astronomers have discovered one of the largest and most complex organic molecules yet in a gaseous star-forming region of interstellar space. Clara Moskowitz reports