This painting (circa 1836) titled “Destruction” is one painting depicting in a five part series by Thomas Cole called “The Course of an Empire.” (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
At some time or another, every historian of Rome has been asked to say where we are, today, on Rome’s cycle of decline. Historians might squirm at such attempts to use the past but, even if history does not repeat itself, nor come packaged into moral lessons, it can deepen our sense of what it ...read more
This image shows Cassini’s last two orbital phases. The ring-grazing orbits are shown in gray (far left), while the Grand Finale orbits — during which Cassini’s collected unprecedented measurements of Saturn’s ionosphere — are shown in blue. The orange line shows Cassini’s final plunge into Saturn on September 15, 2017. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
In April of this year, NASA nudged the Cassini spacecraft into an orbit that took it through a narrow gap between ...read more
Poor fella. (Credit: Dmitry A/Shutterstock)
Scientists aren’t always considered to be the most festive group of people. But The British Medical Journal does its part to celebrate the spirit of the holidays with its annual Christmas issue.
Once a year, the journal opens submissions for studies with a slightly lighter tone, but just as much science. The key to inclusion in the Christmas issue is originality and clever ideas — not bad science. “While we welcome light-h ...read more
Apollo 11 leaving the Earth. NASA.
Within 10 minutes of a Saturn V launch, the first two stages had fallen away as the spacecraft settled into Earth orbit. Within another 10 minutes, both stages had crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. They weren’t recovered for reuse; their jobs were done before the half hour mark on any lunar flight. But the third stage of the Saturn V lived on, following crews all the way to the Moon. Once there is was also left to crash, but this time it was sma ...read more
What is this, a “Euthanasia Coaster” for ants? (Credit: Julijonas Urbonas)
I have a friend who loves roller coasters. He once told me, a fellow coaster-head, “You ever get the feeling that most people say they like roller coasters, but then when they’re in a park they just ride one or two of them and call it a day?” I nodded in the shared sentiment.
All of that said, there’s at least one roller coaster that I, or my friend, am not interested in trying out: t ...read more
(Credit: YouTube/Adam Fish)
The eruption of the Agung volcano in Bali, Indonesia has been devastating, particularly for the 55,000 local people who have had to leave their homes and move into shelters. It has also played havoc with the flights in and out of the island, leaving people stranded while the experts try to work out what the volcano will do next.
But this has been a fascinating time for scholars like me who investigate the use of drones in social justice, environmental activism and cr ...read more
The eruption of Agung on November 27, 2017. Michael W. Ishak / Wikimedia Commons.
Monitoring volcanoes is really hard. Not only are you trying to deduce what a volcano is going to do using context clues like earthquakes, gas emissions and deformation, but once an eruption starts, trying to get a peak at what is coming out at the vent is downright dangerous. New technology like drones and satellites have allowed us to more clearly see what is happening where we couldn’t before, and these ne ...read more
A scene from the short documentary film “Nazi VR” that tells of how a virtual recreation of Auschwitz helped convict a Nazi war criminal. Credit: MEL Films
During World War II, Reinhold Hanning served as a guard at the Auschwitz concentration camp where more than 1.1 million people were killed by Nazi Germany. More than 70 years later, a virtual recreation of Auschwitz helped German prosecutors convict Hanning of being an accessory to the murder of 170,000 peopl ...read more
