The anglerfish was the iconic animal of my childhood. This eerie creature lives miles under the ocean’s surface and – as you probably know, if you were ever an animal-obsessed kid like me – dangles a fleshy, glow-in-the dark “bait” in front of its monstrous jaws. The dangling bait attracts prey and gives the animal […]
Month: August 2011
I asked my husband, who’s a physicist and a pilot, how airplanes stay up in the air. A question like that makes him happy. “It’s the wings,” he said, “They provide lift.” “What’s lift?” I said. “It’s Bernoulli,” he said. “The faster air moves, the lower its pressure. ” I’m used to these answers that are […]
What is the fate of the universe? Cosmologists are converging on an answer, and it ain’t pretty. Or so I gather from people who, hearing that the latest science favors a universe that goes on forever, growing colder and colder, lonelier and lonelier, ask me, “Don’t you find it depressing?” The short answer is, No. […]
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the nature of knowledge and how we acquire it. My training as a scientist taught me to revere the scientific method, and I continue to hold science in the highest regard. Science can teach us much about the world and ourselves, and as I’ve written elsewhere, it can allow us […]
You remember Bees – Part 1, right? The waggle dance they do to show other bees where the flowers are? If not, go back there and click on those links, which explain everything. I’ve just looked through LWON’s archives and we apparently are preoccupied with bees. Them and corvids. Meanwhile, AG poses another little mystery, […]
A few weeks ago, driving south along California’s Highway 1, hugging the coastal curves just north of Big Sur, my boyfriend Drew and I stopped to wander along a cliff top covered in blue larkspur and yellow yarrow. Between the colorful wildflowers, the white cliffs and the crashing Pacific, it was all so lovely that […]
