Space Tethers

Reaching for the Stars

Light Sails

Highways of Light

High Blood Pressure and the Slave Trade

Compact Nuclear Rockets

Air-Breathing Engines

The Puzzle of Hypertension in African-Americans

Genes are often invoked to account for why high blood pressure is so common among African-Americans. Yet the rates are low in Africans. This discrepancy demonstrates how genes and the environment interact

Supersoft X-ray Stars and Supernovae

Several years ago astronomers came across a new type of star that spews out unusually low energy x-rays. These so-called supersoft sources are now thought to be white dwarf stars that cannibalize their stellar companions and then, in many cases, explode

Cichlids of the Rift Lakes

The extraordinary diversity of cichlid fishes challenges entrenched ideas of how quickly new species can arise

A Multifractal Walk down Wall Street

The geometry that describes the shape of coastlines and the patterns of galaxies also elucidates how stock prices soar and plummet

How Limbs Develop

A protein playfully named Sonic hedgehog is one of the long-sought factors that dictate the pattern of limb development