The James Webb Space Telescope as it will appear in orbit. (credit: NASA) I met John Grunsfeld outside a coffee shop in Houston, across the street from Johnson Space Center, a little more than five years ago. He had only recently retired from NASA after a long and storied career. Over the course of nearly […]
Enlarge / A bowl of salad stands on a table. (credit: Getty | Sina Schuldt) As the pandemic enters its third year with cases and hospitalizations as high as ever, fresh data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reminds us that we already had a long track record of failing to manage our […]
Enlarge / Close-up of fresh SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) used in kombucha. (credit: Whitepointer/Getty Images) The refreshing kombucha tea that’s all the rage these days among certain global demographics might also hold the key to affordable, environmentally sustainable living membranes for water filtration, according to a recent paper published in the American Chemical […]
Enlarge / A simulation of a black hole merger. (credit: LIGO/Caltech/MIT/Sonoma State (Aurore Simonnet)) I was pretty excited when LIGO, the giant double-eared gravitational wave observatory in the US, detected the first gravitational waves . When Virgo came online , triangulating gravitational wave signals became possible, and gravitational wave astronomy became a reality. Once the […]
Enlarge (credit: Darren Hillman ) The transition to clean energy involves some markets where we have solutions that are no-brainers (more wind and solar, please) but also some head-scratchers. Maritime shipping falls in the latter category. Barring a return to sailing, these vessels will continue to require relatively high energy-density fuel to cheaply move goods […]
Enlarge / On February 11, 2015, a Falcon 9 lifted off from SpaceX’s Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, carrying the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite on SpaceX’s first deep space mission. (credit: SpaceX) SpaceX launched its 1st interplanetary mission nearly seven years ago. After the Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage […]
Enlarge If ever there was a moment to brush up on your knowledge of the immune system, this is that moment. (Okay, March-April 2020 may have been preferable, but you can still catch up. ) And Immune is the perfect vehicle in order to help you do that. This book is phenomenal. It is engaging, […]
(credit: Felix König ) On the last day of 2021, as final preparations were being made for the New Year’s Eve firework display in central Berlin, outside the particular German capital another era was drawing to a close. It was the beginning of typically the end of Germany’s decades-long dalliance with nuclear power. On December […]
Enlarge / Anne Frank in 1940. A new book, The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation , by Rosemary Sullivan, claims that a retired FBI special agent and a team of investigators have solved the mystery of who betrayed the Frank family to the Nazis. (credit: Public domain) Former FBI special agent Vincent […]
Enlarge (credit: TCD | Prod.DB | Apple TV+/ | lamy) In the first episode of the Foundation series on Apple TV, we see a terrorist try to destroy the space elevator used by the Galactic Empire. This seems like a great chance to talk about the physics of space elevators and to consider what would […]