The Higgs boson, the pope, and the curious interaction between organized religion and big science.
Deep beneath the ocean floor off the Pacific Northwest coast, scientists have described the existence of a potentially vast realm of life, one almost completely disconnected from the world above. Persisting in microscopic cracks in the basalt rocks of Earth’s oceanic crust is a complex microbial ecosystem fueled entirely by chemical reactions with rocks and…
Voyager will soon become the first man-made object to leave the solar system, scientists from NASA say. Voyager 1, which was launched in 1977, is expected to exit the solar system much sooner than previously thought. Voyager 1 and 2 are currently in what is known as the “Heliosheath” – the outermost layer of heliosphere…
Over the years of writing and teaching, I have tried to free myself of constraints I felt, limits to the range of exploration I could make, to the kind of intuition I could credit. I realized gradually that my own religion, and religion in general, could and should disrupt these constraints, which amount to a…
Some people are generous–others, not so much. Why is that? A new study from Switzerland suggests that the answer to that question may be a matter of neuroanatomy, with the brains of altruistic types having more “gray matter” in a region of the brain known as the temporoparietal junction. It’s the first study to show…
The towering redwood forests along California’s coast are known for the clammy fog that rolls in from the ocean almost every night. Now scientists have discovered an unwelcome stowaway in these cloud banks: mercury. Previous research had shown that fog sampled in and around Santa Cruz, California, contained the heavy metal mercury but no one…
On a recent visit to Pioneer Works in the Brooklyn Red Hook neighborhood, I heard a lecture by Matthew Putman on “Imaging the Invisible”. The venue is a newly renovated factory and warehouse dating back to 1866. Putman began his lecture in the post-and-beam grand hall at Pioneer Works by referencing Richard Feynman’s 1959 lecture. “There is plenty of room at the bottom.”