“Lowell always said that the regularity of the [Martian] canals was an unmistakable sign that they were of intelligent origin. The only unresolved question was which side of the telescope the intelligence was on.”— Carl Sagan, Cosmos “Canals on the Planet Mars,” read the headline of The Times of London of April 13, 1882, in […]
Barry Evans
Posted inField Notes
Why Isn’t ‘Eleven’ ‘One-teen?
And why isn’t twelve “two-teen”? Why do bagels come in dozens? Why are there two sets of 12 hours in a day? And why 12 inches to the foot? Like much of northern Europe, England once had a hybrid system of counting based on both 10 (decimal) and 12 (duodecimal). Today, almost all our daily […]
Posted inField Notes
’Twas Brillig
“‘It seems very pretty,’ she said when she had finished it, ‘but it’s rather hard to understand!’” — Alice’s reaction on reading, in mirror writing, “Jabberwocky” in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass ’Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe;All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe. So begins […]
Posted inField Notes
The Five Colors of the Rainbow
“The seven notes of the scale before the return to the octave are analogous to the colors of the rainbow — red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, plus the strangely superfluous indigo which made the number up to seven.” — Ian Bostridge Tenor Ian Bostridge, quoted above, reminds us we are supposed to see […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Monarch Butterflies Part 2: Tracking in Real Time
Last week, I wrote about the bad news: that monarch butterfly populations have been plummeting since the 1980s. The good news is that a revolutionary new tracking device may help those populations recover. Naturalists have been trying to track monarchs for nearly a century, but mass ID-ing (with tiny stick-on tags) only began in large […]
Posted inField Notes
Monarch Butterflies
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 […]
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 […]