History of Science

August 3, 1562 a devastating thunderstorm hit central Europe, damaging buildings, killing animals and destroying crops and vineyards. The havoc caused by this natural disaster was so great, so unprecedented, that soon an unnatural origin for the storm was proposed.

The current incentive structure often leads to dead-end studies—but there are ways to fix the problem

Most software today arrives full of small bugs. But big glitches have lost whole spacecraft or could send tourists driving into the ocean

But coming of age during a recession could temper that rising trend

Historical agriculture practices predict modern mentalities

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!

Rooms beneath the mysterious city contain jade statues, jaguar remains and thousands of other objects

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.

In August 1905, Jean Lanfray, a French man working on a vineyard in the Swiss village of Commugny, murdered his wife and their two children.

I was sitting on this post for a while now. I said I would publish it this week, but I already felt procrastination kicking in. It was going to get pushed into next week or later.

The virus spreading in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone has led to food shortages and neglect of other devastating tropical illnesses

Routine clinical use of his vaccine forestalled the paralysis and death brought by the dreaded illness