(November 23, 2023)
"The thought of light traveling billions of years from distant galaxies only to be washed out in the last billionth of a second by the glow of the nearest strip...
(November 9, 2023)
"You can find many different diagnoses in death certificates, but they're just details. What really kills us is entropy increase." — Sabine Hossenfelder, Existential Physics Along with the Big Bang,...
(October 26, 2023)
If you've ever watched the launch of a rocket, perhaps a Space Shuttle or one of SpaceX's Falcon 9s, you'll have heard the phrase "Max Q." About a minute after...
(October 12, 2023)
Humboldt Bay (Wigi, to the Wiyot people) is actually a lagoon, the largest protected large body of water between San Francisco and Puget Sound. It's about 14 miles long and...
(September 28, 2023)
"I was the most popular man in Oxford for full four & twenty hours." — T.H. Huxley, following his debate with Bishop Wilberforce At 25, Thomas Henry Huxley returned from...
(September 14, 2023)
"It's a wild ride. It's completely unlikely and should not be taken as a model for how scientific discovery ever happens. It's completely ridiculous." — Craig Kaplan, co-author of the...
(August 31, 2023)
"In the ancient Olympics, nobody competed with shoes, you would run barefoot." — Daniel Lieberman, evolutionary biologist Forget the invention of sex, fire, toolmaking, language, agriculture. The real turning point in the...
(August 17, 2023)
Vulcan was the Roman god of fire; he was also ugly. The good news is that he somehow got to marry the goddess Venus, who was something of a catch....
(August 3, 2023)
Every year at this time, I check what I've dumped into my "puzzles" folder over the past 12 months. Hope you enjoy them as much as you enjoy the one...
(August 3, 2023)
Surviving the Toss: Either the two tosses come up the same (two heads or two tails) or different (one head, one tail). So one of them, say Alice, always says...
(July 20, 2023)
Aliens: Intelligent creatures from a distant star who have traveled to Earth. Alien Life: A necessary precursor to those aliens, simple self-replicating molecules, such as cyanobacteria (blue-green algae). Earth is...
(July 6, 2023)
"You now see much bigger and wealthier countries like the U.S. using Rwanda as a role model." A surprising statement given that Rwanda, a landlocked country in the heart of...
(June 22, 2023)
Of the four lagoons claimed by Humboldt Lagoons State Park, only two would pass muster with any self-respecting dictionary. A lagoon is usually defined as a shallow body of brackish...
(June 8, 2023)
Astronomers glean information about distant objects from four types of energetic signals: electromagnetic radiation (such as visible light, radio waves and gamma waves); gravitational waves (subtle "ripples' in spacetime, first...
(May 25, 2023)
A geological hotspot deep underground in the northeast corner of California has been sending molten rock to the surface for over half a million years. It's a reminder that we...
