History of Science

Genetic blueprints attached to a rocket survived a short spaceflight and later passed on their biological instructions

The Wall Street Journal found in 2010 that an NFL game has just 11 minutes of actual action. Eight decades earlier, Scientific American found just about the same thing
 

I'm as sworn to radical rationalism as the next neo-Darwinian materialist. That said, over the years I've had to "quarantine," for lack of a better word, a few anomalous personal experiences that have stubbornly defied my own logical understanding of them.

Two journalists combine history, science and storytelling to recount the experiences of those who experienced the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck Japan in 2011 and its aftermath

Looking for a gift that says, "Hey, I know you like math"? Look no further. There is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to wonderful mathematical things to give to people, but here are some of the coolest items I've seen this year.

Reported in Scientific American, This Week in World War I: November 21, 1914 From the Scientific American Supplement issue of November 21, 1914, we note, "The first object of an army in war is to disperse or destroy the enemy, but a correlative duty is the care of its own men when wounded or otherwise [...]

As a nation's population ages, more and more older people may draw from support systems such as Social Security, yet fewer workers may be around to pay into those systems.

Even as the world continues to spew more carbon pollution, change has begun—and is accelerating

One of the most spectacular and visually fascinating Tet Zoo-related books of recent-ish months is Chet Van Duzer's Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps, published in 2013 by the British Library.

A nebulous trade in forged and illegal fossils is an ever-growing headache for paleontologists

Reported in Scientific American, This Week in World War I: November 14, 1914 The tactical use of artillery had been evolving in the years before the Great War: In South Africa in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 the British developed the concept of the "creeping barrage," where a curtain of shellfire proceeded just in front [...]