Astrobiologist Aims to Make Science Education More Interactive
I remember battling sleepiness as I slouched in a large lecture hall, squinting to make out the writing on the blackboard during my freshman introductory physics course in college.
"space"
Science Far from Center Stage in Obama’s State of the Union
President Barack Obama's sixth State of the Union address, his first before a Republican-led legislature, was studded this evening with references to science and technology amidst talk of middle class tax cuts, thawing U.S...
Science Far from Center Stage in Obama's State of the Union
President Barack Obama's sixth State of the Union address, his first before a Republican-led legislature, was studded this evening with references to science and technology amidst talk of middle class tax cuts, thawing U.S...
NASA's Dawn Mission Captures New Image of Dwarf Planet Ceres
NASA’s Dawn mission, having performed remarkably at the asteroid Vesta, is homing in on Ceres. The spacecraft’s ion engines will bring it to a capture orbit around this 590 mile diameter dwarf planet on March 6th, 2015 – at a distance some 2.5 times further from the Sun than the Earth...
Lost And Found On Mars
Lost, presumed crashed, the Beagle-2 lander is finally located on Mars. Back in December 2003 a bold and decidedly British robotic device was released from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express orbiter...
Neutrinos on Ice: Launching the Balloon
Editor's Note: Welcome to ANITA, the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna! From October to December, Katie Mulrey is traveling with the ANITA collaboration to Antarctica to build and launch ANITA III, a scientific balloon that uses the entire continent of Antarctica for neutrino and cosmic ray detection...
Troublemaker Lee Smolin Says Physics–and Its Laws–Must Evolve*
What separates good from bad troublemakers? Productive provocateurs from mere contrarians, bullshit artists, attention-seekers? This is the personalized equivalent of philosophy’s demarcation problem, which involves telling genuine from pseudo-science...
Stephen Hawking, Hawking Incorporated, and the Myth of the Lone Genius
Comfortably sitting in the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas in Japantown in San Francisco, I was watching The Theory of Everything with an audience of hundreds.
Will We Find Extraterrestrial Life In 2015?
Probably not, but just possibly yes. One of the reasons that the search for life elsewhere in the universe is so exciting is that it would take only one chance discovery, one lucky break, for all the walls to come tumbling down...
Readers Choose the Top 10 Scientific American Stories of 2014
World events left many marks and losses in 2014, but Scientific American readers kept calm and carried on for the most part, as your top picks among the stories we published this year reveal...
The Top Ten Space and Physics Stories of 2014
From humanity’s first, flawed foray to the surface of a comet to the celebrated discovery of (and less celebrated skepticism about) primordial gravitational waves, 2014 has brought some historic successes and failures in space science and physics...
Neutrinos on Ice: Waiting to Fly
It’s another beautiful day in Antarctica, and the time has come to launch ANITA! Finding the right date is tricky. Many factors have to fall into place.
Mars, Ancient Water, Deep Hydrogen, and Life
Two billion year-old water pockets and a revised deep hydrogen content are good news for Earth’s vast subsurface biosphere, and could offer clues to life on Mars and much further beyond...
Reflections on My @SciAmBlogs Tenure
After three and a half years or so as a part of the SciAm blogging network, this my last post as a dedicated blog at Scientific American. There will be an announcement from SciAm about the reorganization of the blogging network, and PsiVid, where I’ve posted about science in TV, video and film along with [...]..
Erin Gee Blends Emotions, Science, Music and Robotic Pianos
This week’s video comes from a post by Princess Ojiaku over at Science With Moxie. According to the original post: Erin Gee is a Canadian artist and composer who has created a way to directly feed human emotions into music played by robots that she built and programmed herself...
The Greatest Science Music Video Parodies Continue
Tim Blais of A Capella Science has come up with a few great new science music video parodies. First, a chemistry-themed version of Meghan Trainor’s ‘All About That Base’, and second an exam-riddled student’s version of Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’...
How Brains Know Where Things Are—Making Space by Jennifer Groh
Groh launches her book with a BIG FAT LIE: she tells us that nine-tenths of our brain power is spent determining where things are. Then she immediately admits that she just made that up, but that she'd dedicate the rest of the book to explaining why she thinks its true...
Comet 67P Only Looks Gray, It’s Actually Black
The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission has now released the first narrow-angle color composite image of Comet 67P – taken through a set of red, green, and blue filters.
Forecasting the Sun's Fury: How Artificial Intelligence Can Predict Solar Flares
A couple of months ago, the sun sported the largest sunspot we've seen in the last 24 years. This monstrous spot, visible to the naked eye (that is, without magnification, but with protective eyewear of course), launched more than 100 flares...
The Art and Science of Peppermint
I love the latest video from the folks at USC Dornsife, all about the art and science of peppermint. In addition to being a fun, fast paced and visually pleasing film, this work gives us a lot of basic information about peppermint from diverse points of view including psychology, history, art, neurobiology — and more...
