Part 1: Migration Magic It’s not easy being a monarch butterfly these days. Your caterpillar’s essential milkweed food is no longer abundant; illegal logging and beetle infestations threaten your main winter roosts in Mexico, and climate change is playing havoc with nectar plants on your migration routes. Where hundreds of millions of monarchs roosted annually […]
Barry Evans
Posted inField Notes
In the Beginning
“A good scientific theory is one that allows us to calculate the results of many observations from few assumptions.” — Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder Hossenfelder’s concise statement explains why the Genesis account — Earth and Heavens created out of nothing in six days — has no appeal for scientists looking to understand the cosmos. And why […]
Posted inField Notes
Cermeño’s Shipwreck
The European settlement of what we now know as the city of Trinidad began when two Spanish Navy captains, Bruno de Hecata (commanding Santiago) and Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra (commanding Sonora), landed there on June 9, 1775. Two days later on Trinity Sunday — hence the name — they erected a wooden […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
‘We’re All Different’
Editor: My heart goes out to Sarah Blackstone-Fredericks (“How to Meditate When the World is on Fire,” Jan 15), with her multiple (17!) moves, and I applaud her for finding peace of mind by creating a safe space wherever she found herself. So while I found myself agreeing with most of her heartfelt essay on […]
Posted inField Notes
Coincidences (Not That Amazing)
“It is no great wonder if in the long process of time, while fortune takes her course hither and thither, numerous coincidences should spontaneously occur.” — Plutarch “I’ve been looking for you my whole life!” I chortled, running around the table to give my birthday twin a big embrace. She reciprocated, but barely — she […]
Posted inField Notes
New Year Miscellany
6174 Self-taught Indian mathematician D.R. Kaprekar (1905-1986) discovered this curious result in 1955. Take any four-digit number with at least two distinct digits, write the digits first in descending, then in ascending order, and subtract one from the other. Repeat with the resulting number, and again if necessary. Within seven iterations, you’ll always arrive at […]
Posted inField Notes
Superstar
This time of year, you’ll no doubt be seeing commentaries about the Star of Bethlehem, many of which will explain away the “star” as a conjunction of two planets, or as a comet, or even as a bolide (very bright meteor). Looking over my past writing, I realize I’ve been guilty of this in this […]
Posted inField Notes
Atlas and Pleione’s Kids: The Pleiades
I’ve written about the Pleiades star cluster before (“Orion and the Pleiades,” Jan. 12, 2023), in which I focused on the ancient Greek myth of the hunter Orion endlessly pursuing Mom, Dad and seven sisters across the night sky. Here, I’m going to focus on the stars themselves, and what makes them so interesting to […]
Posted inField Notes
The Lure of Immortality
We’re immortal, you and I. Well, not quite immortal as in “forever,” but if you count nearly a third of the age of the universe as forever, yes, we’re immortal. And when I say “we,” I don’t mean our bodies, what we usually think of as our selves. Along with all multicellular organisms, we consist […]
Posted inField Notes
The Magic of Photosynthesis
“How does grass make sheep?” We were walking across a field in Northern England recently, and the child-like question popped up, unbidden and unexpected, like similar ones sometimes do: “How do raindrops know to fall straight down and redwoods to grow straight up?” “How does my brain make sense of tiny squiggles on a sheet […]
Posted inField Notes
Tears in Rain: Musings on Memory
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.” — Roy Batty’s last words, Blade Runner Or is it “tears in the rain?”Cinephiles […]
Posted inField Notes
Bridge of Spies
“[Gary Powers] performed his duty in a very dangerous mission and he performed it well, and I think I know more about that than some of his detractors and critics know ….” — CIA Director Allen Dulles Standing on a hill recently, overlooking the Glienicke Bridge near Potsdam, Germany, several thoughts came to mind. While the […]