History of Science

A few months ago I wrote about some mystifying mathematical and geographic tiles I encountered at the National Tile Museum in Lisbon, Portugal.

The Republican Party is widely predicted to win control of the Senate as a result of today's midterm elections. In broadstrokes, that outcome portends a green light for the Keystone XL Pipeline, a blow to the Affordable Care Act and a push for corporate tax reform.

"Everybody dies, and every ship sinks" is the abbreviated story of the battle in which the Huis de Kreuningen was lost. Archaeologists believe they've now found it

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

Historical agriculture practices predict modern mentalities

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

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.