Books on Science: Fiddling With a Two-Year Gap in the Busy Life of Copernicus
Dava Sobel has long taken a quirky approach to science history. In “Galileo’s Daughter” (1999), for instance, she focused not on the standard biographical material but on the scientist’s love for his illegitimate daughter, consigned [...]
How Geodesic Domes Work
You can find eco-friendly, sustainable and locally-made and grown products on shelves in almost every store these days. So perhaps it’s no surprise that some people want to make the buildings themselves more in tune with the environment, [...]
Herschel:Herschel probes the dusty history of a giant star
About 5 thousand million years from now, our Sun will expand into a red giant, swelling to such a size that it may swallow the Earth. It will then begin to shed huge amounts of dust, surrounding itself with an expanding circumstellar envelope [...]
Fluffysaurus
This artist’s drawing shows what the newly discovered feathered dinos — the larger species with yellow on their snouts — might have looked like. Credit: Brian Choo
Fossilized dinosaur feathers recently unearthed in China reveal one of [...]
Mars Express:Mars Express explores the roots of Martian volcanoes
Recent analysis of radio signals sent back by ESA’s Mars Express orbiter has enabled a team of Belgian and German scientists to probe deep beneath the surface of Mars. The first targeted, high resolution measurements of Martian gravity [...]
Bony bacteria
New species builds hard structures inside cells
Scientists have discovered skeletons in the cyanobacterial closet. A never-before-seen species of cyanobacterium loads its cells with little bonelike lumps that may act as ballast, helping to [...]
UK company to build Sun satellite
Ralph Cordey from Astrium UK explains how the craft will be built to survive its mission to the Sun
British industry will lead the production of Solar Orbiter (SolO), a spacecraft that will travel closer to the Sun than any satellite to date.
SolO [...]
Betsy Lerner – How to get an agent
Writing Books for Readers Beyond Academe Harvard University Faculty Development & Diversity In the world of writing and publishing, “academic” is too often shorthand for — as one editor puts it — “lifeless prose, [...]
ORAL HISTORY INITIATIVE: On Frank O’Hara – Woodberry Poetry Room
In conjunction with the Woodberry Poetry Room’s 80th Anniversary, the Poetry Room presented an oral history of the indefatigably friendly, flamboyant and metaphysical poet Frank O’Hara, featuring his dear friend and Harvard classmate, [...]
Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins chat God, politics in final interview
British-born journalist and atheist intellectual Christopher Hitchens, who made the United States his home and backed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, died on 15 December 2011 at the age of 62.
Hitchens died in Houston of pneumonia, a complication [...]
