THE EXOPLANET TRAVEL BUREAU
NASA AND Cal Tech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have devised a wonderfully artful means of describing exoplanets, planets that are extrasolar, orbiting stars other than the Sun. The two organizations have … Continue reading
PASSING A TURING TEST
CAN YOU outthink a 13-year-old Ukrainian kid? Or, more accurately, can you outthink an artificial intelligence, a chatbot, programmed to imitate him? This has become a cause célèbre, not without … Continue reading
BAD NEWS FOR BIOFUELS
RECENT ANALYSES by the World Resources Institute question the contribution of biofuels to the sustainability of food and climate. The paper “Avoiding Bioenergy Competition for Food Crops and Land,” http://goo.gl/A8mt2m, … Continue reading
COMBED COCONUTS HAVE COWLICKS
I FIND comfort in fixed point theorems. Briefly, these mathematical verities say that, under certain conditions, some things don’t change: They are fixed. A comforting thought. The more general the … Continue reading
FUN (AND UTILITY) WITH SCIENCE
PUNCH CARD Programmable Microfluidics holds the promise of bringing more science out of the research lab and into the developing world. It could also be a lot of fun encouraging … Continue reading
THE FUTURE AIN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE
FUTURISTS HAVE a real challenge: Aim too high, and people ridicule their “Tomorrow everyone will helicopter to work.” Aim too low, “Speaker phones will be all the rage!,” and their … Continue reading
THE EARTH’S MOST ABUNDANT MINERAL
THE MINERAL bridgmanite got its name only recently. Despite this, specialists in Earth science have long known that the stuff is Earth’s most abundant mineral. I gleaned this, and other … Continue reading
WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE—AND PLENTY TO READ
THE DECEMBER 18, 2014, issue of London Review of Books features an article by Rose George titled “No Bottle.” It’s a review of three books, Drinking Water: A History by … Continue reading
POWER FROM OLD SOL
SOLAR POWER is a tantalizing concept. Sunlight is there half the time in many places, free for the asking. Well, not exactly free, with some recent developments very promising and … Continue reading
IN A MUSEUM… NOT A LONG TIME AGO… NOT FAR, FAR AWAY
THE SEVENTH episode of Star Wars is more than a year away. (It opens in the U.S. on December 18, 2015.) However, there’s already a 1:31 teaser of The Force … Continue reading
