OK, quick (and ancient) puzzle to get us going, so please cover up the next paragraph before you answer. Alice and Bob take turns throwing seven dice. Alice will win as soon as every die lands the same; Bob will win the first time every die lands differently. Who wins? Alice, right? Since only six […]
science
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Men (and Women) are from Mars … Maybe
Suppose, just suppose, we found life on Mars: microscopic critters happily wiggling and metabolizing under the polar ice, or swimming around in an underground pool of water on the warm flanks of Olympus Mons. What would we find when we examined them close up? In particular, how would they reproduce? Would they be like life […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Einstein, Newton andthe Eclipse of 1919
Britain launched two expeditions to observe the total eclipse of May 29, 1919. One was from Greenwich Observatory, under the direction of the British Astronomer Royal Frank Dyson. “He was at that time very skeptical about [Einstein’s] theory, though deeply interested in it; and he realized its very great importance,” wrote Arthur Eddington, director of […]
Posted inNews
Treacherous Maw
It’s a calm, blue-sky day out here on the north jetty — the sort of day when the sun’s heat actually reaches the skin. The wind is slight. The ocean’s a quiet rumple in the Humboldt Bay entrance channel, between here and the south jetty — moving just enough to elicit languid dingding-dingdinging from a […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Einstein, Newton and the Eclipse of 1919
This is the tale of the high-stakes test of scientific theories that made headlines around the world nearly 100 years ago in the aftermath of World War I, linking the lives of two pacifists on opposing sides of the conflict: German-born theoretician Albert Einstein and English astronomer Arthur Eddington. Einstein, already famous for his groundbreaking […]
Posted inNews
Probing Pot
Ten years ago, the premise for a marijuana institute would have been laughed off of even Humboldt State University’s fertile and notoriously weed-friendly campus. Even one year ago, despite changing political climes and the increasing call for daylight on the North Coast’s shady marijuana industry, the academic minds who created the institute were unsure if […]
Posted inNews
Bar Food Crawl
Most of us know all too well the power of beer goggles — how a few drinks can make a stranger or an ex seem far dreamier than in the cold light of sobriety. But what about food? Sure, that braised pork might be enhanced by pairing it with a petite sirah, but after the […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Comet ISON: Coming Our Way
Predicting whether an incoming comet will be spectacular or not, especially when it’s a first-timer, is a risky business. I got my start writing science columns when the editor of our then-local paper called me in early 1986. “I understand Comet Halley is on its way here, and I’d like a story about what it’s […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
In a World Without Humans
I’ve been intrigued by the tiny primates we call “tarsiers” ever since reading, long ago, a speculative essay in the now-defunct popular science magazine Omni that posed the question, “If humans hadn’t evolved, what other animal might have taken our ‘lords of the Earth’ top billing?” After considering the usual suspects — dolphins, bonobos, octopi […]
Posted inArts + Scene
An Extraordinary “Oddist”
If you’re a regular at Eureka’s Arts! Alive, you’ve surely seen him. He’s the older guy with a ponytail wearing a full motorcycle helmet and pausing to examine each and every work of art he comes across. His signature monthly appearance may be unmistakable, but underneath that magenta and silver helmet, the artist Orr Marshall […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
The Air on Mars
That last breath you took? You can thank the Earth’s magnetic field for it. Without the field, researchers believe that solar wind (energetic protons and electrons streaming out from the sun) would have stripped much of the air from our planet long ago. For the field, you can thank the giant, molten ball of iron […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Brains, Minds and Myths
Myths about the brain are easy to come by and hard to dispel. Here are a handful that keep cropping up: You are either “right-brained” or “left-brained.” The idea stems from experiments performed on “split-brain” patients in the 1960s by Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga at Caltech. In cases of extreme epilepsy, doctors sometimes resort […]