The Universe Is Still Dark After All These Years
Well into the 21st century, it is indisputable that we know more about the universe than ever before.So that we don't get lulled into a false sense of confidence, today I provide a short list of open...
View ArticleThe Challenge Of Betting On A Scientific Idea
Given that science is believed to be about certainty, betting on a scientific idea sounds like an oxymoron.Yet scientists bet on ideas all the time, even if mostly for jest. Of course, this only makes...
View ArticleThe Never-Ending Climb Of Mount Science
The other day, I was giving a public lecture when someone asked me a question that I wish people would ask me more often: "Professor: Why are you a scientist?"I answered that I couldn't do anything...
View ArticleCan Scientific Belief Go Too Far?
Last week, our own Tania Lombrozo ignited an intense discussion of the differences between factual and religious belief. I want to take off from there and examine a no less controversial issue, one...
View ArticleNo End In Sight? No Problem!
Last week, I came across George Johnson's piece for The New York Times, "Beyond Energy, Matter, Time and Space," where he writes, in his usually engaging style, about two recent books with opposite...
View ArticleAs 2015 Begins, Some Ruminations On Science And Life
Over the years, I've been collecting thought fragments and sentences that come to me during the day or in the course of my writing books and essays.Since this is a time of introspection and...
View ArticleShould You Trust That New Medical Study?
News of medical studies fill the headlines and airwaves — often in blatant contradiction.
View ArticleWhat The 'God Of The Gaps' Teaches Us About Science
"God of the Gaps": When God is invoked to fill in the blanks in scientific knowledge. An old-fashioned and doomed theological approach, but one that is nevertheless very much alive in the minds of...
View ArticleAfter Long Slumber, Philae Says Hi To The World
In a technological feat that moved the world, last November the European Space Agency landed the small probe Philae on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, which is cruising at some 100,000 miles per hour...
View ArticleDesigning Superhumans
The age of genetic design is here.It is now possible to edit genes of diverse organisms — almost like we edit a string of text — by cutting and pasting (splicing) genes at desired locations. A recent...
View ArticleGame Of Quarks: A Guide For The Perplexed
Nature is the ultimate puzzle player, as scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) found out last week.In the late 1950s, particle physics was in crisis. Being the branch of physics...
View ArticleMoving From Creation Of The Cosmos To Human Life
Few questions of our time are more perplexing than the transition from non-living to living matter.How did a sample of inorganic chemicals self-organize to become a living creature, capable of...
View ArticleThe Immortal Brain: Would You Go For It?
Last Saturday, two-time Pulitzer prize winner Amy Harmon published a fascinating article in TheNew York Times about a young dying woman who chose to have her brain preserved in case neuroscience could...
View Article'The Hidden Code': An Embrace Of Art And Science
On Thursday, the Boston Museum of Science will premiere The Hidden Code at the Charles Hayden Planetarium, a multimedia piece by Paul Miller (aka D J Spooky).
View ArticleThe Mars Double Attack
This is Mars week.First, we had the mindboggling announcement that there is strong evidence of liquid water flowing on the Martian surface. And, also this week, on Oct. 2, the much-awaited Riddley...
View ArticleA Short History Of The Mysterious Disappearing Neutrinos
We learned Tuesday that Takaaki Kajita, from the Super-Kamiokande Collaboration in Japan, and Arthur McDonald, from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Collaboration in Canada (SNO), won the 2015 Nobel...
View ArticleCould All Really Come From Nothing?
The origin of the universe is one of the most difficult realities we ponder.It bends our logic, straining the words we have to describe it. If one is to say the universe started at the Big Bang some...
View ArticleExploring Catalogues Of Living Creatures And Celestial Objects
One of the indisputable advantages of the Internet is accessibility of information, in particular for educational purposes, inside and outside schools.Vast collections of what we photograph, study and...
View ArticlePushing The Frontiers Of High-Energy Physics Links Humanity
I spent last week at CERN, the high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, where the Higgs boson particle was discovered in July 2012.For those who are not yet familiar, CERN houses a...
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