In 2008, Stephen Hawking delivered a lecture on “why we should go into space” in honor of NASA’s 50th anniversary. (Credit: NASA/Paul. E. Alers)
When I look at the night sky, I often view the stars not just in space but also in terms of their places in time. Light moves at a finite speed (299,792 kilometers per second, to be precise), so the journey from star to star is a very long one even for a beam of light. When astronomers talk about light years of distance, they are lit ...read more
A provocative paleontology paper out today suggests researchers can be in too much of a rush to name new species from highly fragmentary fossils, citing traits in ichthyosaurs (above) that could be interpreted as natural variation within a species, rather than the defining characteristics of separate species. (Credit James McKay)
In 2015, astrophysicist and science commentary go-to guy Neil Degrasse Tyson, flubbing an answer on a quiz show, quipped: “I love b ...read more
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Well, if you’re on the internet today, you’ve probably already heard: Stephen Hawking died this morning at the age of 76. Almost every single news and science-based website (are there any others?) have stories on the physicist and his amazing life and achievements — chief among them, perhaps, being famous enough to deserve all those headlines. He was almost certainly the world’s most recognizable living scientist, and one of the most famous of all ...read more
Grand spiral galaxy (NGC 1232). (Credit: FORS/8.2-meter VLT Antu/ESO)
In a study published March 9 in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, astronomers announced the discovery that all disk galaxies rotate about once every billion years, no matter their size or mass.
“It’s not Swiss watch precision,” said Gerhardt Meurer, an astronomer from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), in a press release. “But regard ...read more
(Credit: Lwp Kommunikáció/Flickr, CC BY-SA)
Soon after I enrolled as a graduate student at Cambridge University in 1964, I encountered a fellow student, two years ahead of me in his studies, who was unsteady on his feet and spoke with great difficulty. This was Stephen Hawking. He had recently been diagnosed with a degenerative disease, and it was thought that he might not survive long enough even to finish his PhD. But he lived to the age of 76, passing away on March 14, 2018.
It ...read more
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In late February, an invasion of warm, southern air sent temperatures surging above freezing across the Arctic and toward the North Pole. In the two weeks since then, three nor’easters have smacked New England and the surrounding areas.
As the Arctic warms, this trend has become common in recent winters, and it’s drawn new attention to links between the polar vortex — a constant mass of cold, dense air rotating over the north pole — and weather pa ...read more
An artist’s concept of a future orbital moon station. (Credit: Boeing)
The International Space Station is entering its twilight years. As such, NASA is making plans for the space station of the future — one that would orbit the moon.
This new lunar outpost will be smaller and more remote than the ISS — orbing beyond Earth’s protective magnetic field. And the station’s goal would be to serve as a transit hub for deep space missions and exploration past low-Earth or ...read more
Pterosaurs were more successful, evolutionarily speaking, than once believed, and were in their prime when done in by the same mass extinction that claimed the non-avian dinosaurs. (Credit Witton MP, Naish D (2008) A Reappraisal of Azhdarchid Pterosaur Functional Morphology and Paleoecology. PLoS ONE 3(5): e2271. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002271)
While dinosaurs have a healthy hold on our imagination, their sky-sailing relatives the pterosaurs don’t get nearly as much attention as they sh ...read more
