The world’s last great ice sheet is in the process of collapsing. This is not about climate change. It is about gravity and unstable foundations. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) will raise North America’s sea levels ten feet when it goes. It will shift some shorelines inland many miles. A new study sets out […]
For years Dark Matter has confronted physics with a massive mystery. A recent article describes it as ‘the invisible substance that astronomers believe accounts for about 80% of the stuff in the universe.’ But what is it? This question has physicists searching for obscure new particles with the world’s largest machine, the Large Hadron Collider. […]
A new mystery planet is in the astronomic news. It is a real mystery. But is it a real planet? First the mystery: Planet X, as some are calling it, is thought to roam outside the orbit of Pluto (which was recently demoted to dwarf from ninth-planet status). So far no-one has seen Planet X. […]
Black holes are in the news again. Only a few weeks ago news of two surprisingly big black holes colliding in a distant galaxy arrived at Earth. Now astronomers have found a closer and far bigger pair of black holes. First the gravity waves. A fantastically sensitive instrument called LIGO measured them as they rolled […]
Once in a while one comes upon a surprising good-news story. Evidence is flooding in to show our attitudes to our intestinal bacteria are wrong. As I wrote recently, the new view is simply: Bugs “R” Us. We have discovered that our inner microbes care for many of our basic needs. And now new evidence […]
The classic case comes from the world of pulp fiction: Entombed, a kidnapped child is running out of air; arrested, the prime suspect will not say where. Do you tear his toenails out or calmly interrogate him? The question takes on practical significance with news anchors wondering what we can inflict on the accused Paris […]
Is Bassar al-Assad causing all those Syrian refugees to flee? Well, yes, in a way — but also no. Science now has something to say of this though few have noticed: Chances are that climate change led to the war the refugees are fleeing. They lived in a region that both climate modeling and weather […]
Janet Mary Rogge Dugle In memoriam Jan Dugle was an American botanist. Black-spruce ecosystems were her special thing. I met her and her first husband David (whose trailblazing work with DNA I have mentioned) when I first arrived in North America. She soon sussed out my chief deficiency and set out to fix it: She […]
It may be the top science story of this century so far (though I hope an even bigger one is coming): Physicists detected gravitational waves; you can hear them here. This discovery has profound implications for the future of cosmology. It will affect our lives in ways we cannot yet conceive. It was a long […]