The historian of science Owen Gingerich died on May 28. We’re re-posting this essay, which originally appeared on June 10, 2011, because it involves the author’s personal encounter with him. The references to dates (e.g., “A few months ago”) remain as in the original post. The 16-year-old student has an idea, but she doesn’t have […]
Astronomy
A version of this essay originally appeared June 15, 2012, as part of this site’s Father’s Day series. In the final paragraph I’ve updated one temporal reference (“two weeks ago yesterday” to “May 31, 2012”) and added one recent personal development. “My father,” I would say, “is older than the universe.” The line has always […]
One cold night a couple of weeks ago, my family and I bundled up to bike out to a park in one of Seattle’s northern suburbs. We have a routine for such trips after all these years. First we layer, and then we bedeck our bikes with lights: front lights, back lights, hub lights, even […]
Time again to reach into the “Ask Mr. Cosmology” mailbag and see what readers want to know about . . . The Wonders of the Universe! Q: Does the word “creation” imply a Creator? Mr. Cosmology: No, thank God. Q: What does Mr. Cosmology think of the theorists who argue for the anthropic principle? Mr. Cosmology: They’re […]
NOTE: The images in this post are best viewed on a desktop device or tablet, not a phone. One dim November afternoon in Alabama in 1954, 34-year-old Ann Hodges curled up on her couch, pulled the quilts around her body, and fell asleep. She woke in pain and disorientation to a house full of smoke, […]
Right there! The moon! And, right above it, Mars. Right over my head. Right over your head. Right over your head, person driving that car! Right over your heads, people who just rode by on the train! Right over your head, person walking your dog! And the dog’s head, too! And right over my grandparent’s […]
That photo there was a lucky shot. I was sitting on the couch minding my own business and looked up, and the sunlight had hit the glass vase and the water in it and had gone nuts with optics. It went right through the tulip petals so that for me, sitting there, they were translucent […]
This essay originally ran in 2011. Back then, the Hubble Space Telescope was the exemplar of non-Earth astronomical observation. Its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, launched in December 2021. This anecdote, however, might be timeless. In 1984, David Soderblom was a new hire at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and one day […]