The Last Word On Nothing

Redux: Embracing My Hubble Moments

By: Cassandra Willyard | June 24, 2013

LWON loves this 10/20/2011 post and is reprinting it, feeling that we’re always at any time just a minute away from our own Hubble moments.

In 2006, when I was in graduate school for science writing, one of my professors brought in an astronomer to talk about his exoplanet discoveries (just in case you don’t know, exoplanets are planets outside our solar system). We were supposed to listen to Dr. Astronomer’s talk, ask a few questions, call some scientists for outside comments, and then write a news story. Full disclosure here: I don’t care one whit about astronomy. I never have. Oh sure, I can walk you through the planets in our solar system. And I know something about stars and galaxies. But beyond that, I’m kind of at a loss.

Dr. Astronomer had made his discoveries using the Hubble Telescope and, as he talked, it slowly dawned on me that this telescope he was talking about, this Hubble, is in space. My mind was officially blown. We put a goddamn telescope in SPACE! Holy. Effing. News peg. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: Sally Adee | June 22, 2013

June 17 – 21

“I think girls very much do want to be JASONs and they want to be in DARPA, they just don’t always know it, so we need to get them to read about it.” This week, Ann asked defense journalism powerhouse Sharon Weinberger to add her two cents to the ongoing LWON conversation about women and science journalism.

Cameron waited for the butterflies to emerge.

Richard took a poke at explaining the history of relativity, which “has the reputation of being nearly impenetrable,” and why Einstein was the one who got credit for it.

Christie told us why the best place to look while watching a beautiful sunset is behind you.

And Michelle left us with this conversation piece: “Two weeks ago, for the first time in 15 years, I flushed the toilet inside my house.”

Relativity for Preschoolers

By: Richard Panek | June 21, 2013

“If, for example, I say that ‘the train arrives here at 7 o’clock,’ that means, more or less, ‘the pointing of the small hand of my clock to 7 and the arrival of the train are simultaneous events.'” –Albert Einstein

The special theory of relativity has the reputation of being nearly impenetrable, as opposed to the general theory of relativity, which has the reputation of being wholly impenetrable. But Albert Einstein had a knack for explaining complex ideas: Make them simple enough that even a child could understand them. And a child, in this case, was anyone old enough to know what the time is when the small hand is pointing precisely to the 7.
Continue reading →

Plugging In

By: Michelle Nijhuis | June 20, 2013

Two weeks ago, for the first time in 15 years, I flushed the toilet inside my house.

This — and by “this” I mean the 15 years of non-flushing — was not quite as gross as it might sound. Until very recently, my family and I lived off the electrical grid in rural Colorado, in a straw-bale house with solar panels, minimal plumbing and a limited water supply. To conserve electricity, we had few appliances, and to save water we used a composting toilet (we had what is delicately called a honey bucket). It was fun and cheap and wonderful in unexpected ways — even the honey bucket had its charms — but over the past year it became clear that my family needed a less isolated place to call home.

Our off-the-grid life and our move is chronicled in this new piece from the public-radio show BURN, but to make a long story short, we rented out our straw-bale nest, bid tearful goodbyes to our neighbors, and moved to the middle of a still rural but larger town in the Pacific Northwest, close to both family and old friends. And then we promptly plugged back into the grid.

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Conversation: Girls Reading Boy Books

By: Sharon Weinberger Ann Finkbeiner | June 19, 2013

Ann: May I introduce my friend and colleague, Sharon Weinberger. She once wrote a book about her trips to the world’s various nuclear test sites and it sold reasonably well, probably to boys. But recently somebody else’s book, The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold History of the Women Who Helped Win World War II, hit the best-seller list, and Sharon told me she was possessed by the Great Green God of Jealousy. That’s a well-known side effect of having written any book ever, but I think in this case it’s more complicated. Dear Sharon, can you explicate?

Sharon: The Girls of Atomic City is clearly an appealing book so I don’t begrudge the author her success. But in this case, I think my jealousy is about her ability to connect with female readers. I write on science and national security, and when I look for examples of books in this area that seem to have crossed the gender barrier, I find books that are about family life or wives of scientists. Another recent example, perhaps, is the Astronauts’ Wives Club, which chronicles the wives of the men who had the “right stuff.” This goes back to the issue you raised of gender in scientists’ profiles: why do journalists ask scientists who are women about their childrearing habits? Perhaps we need to ask another question: why do we see women gravitating toward books about childrearing habits?

Ann: Because our stupid binary culture can’t handle anything more complicated?
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Digits of the Devil

By: Christie Aschwanden | June 18, 2013

On Sunday evening, I was standing in our orchard watching the sunset when I turned around and saw a strange beam of light that appeared to rise from the east, directly opposite the setting sun. Crepuscular rays or “God’s Fingers” are pretty common around here, but usually these majestic light rays emanate from the sun. How could a sunlight radiate from a point opposite the sun?

I basked in this beguiling mystery for approximately ten seconds before my husband informed me that it was no mystery at all. “It’s just an optical illusion caused by those clouds,” he said, pointing to the storm clouds above that had been spitting out dry lightning for the past 20 minutes.

Upon further investigation, I realized that he was right. The rays we were seeing were actually parallel lines, created by sunlight pouring through gaps in the clouds. But when these straight, parallel lines get projected onto our spherical sky, they take on a circular appearance and seem to converge on the horizon in the same way that railroad tracks appear to intersect in the far-off distance. This photograph taken by the Expedition 29 crew at the International Space Station in 2011 offers a more revealing perspective. Continue reading →

Why did the boy throw the butter out the window?*

By: Cameron Walker | June 17, 2013

Right now, the butterfly might be coming out. Or it might not. On Thursday, my son’s preschool teacher said that Friday would be the day. On Friday, she said she hoped it would wait until Monday. She and the kids have been marking off the days since the monarch caterpillar stopped munching milkweed and spun its chrysalis.

The monarch’s chrysalis is green with a few yellow spots like a crown near the top. It hangs on the inside of a soft-sided mesh cage. Every time someone says the word butterfly, it seems, at least one kid jumps up and checks to see whether it has emerged. Waiting is very, very hard. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: Sally Adee | June 15, 2013

June 10 – 14

This week, LWON got a new PoLWON! (not pictured at left) Her name is Roberta Kwok and you may remember her from her intriguing guest post about how investigators solved a grisly and tragic car crash. Roberta kicked the doors down with with an amazing primer on the history of the exoplanet hunt.

Tom told us why it’s not the popcorn that makes you fat but the bag. And don’t skip the comments, in which Ann reveals the secrets to perfect diy popcorn.

Ann also teamed up with Abstruse Goose to make fun of poison ivy. (Patronising poison ivy in mid-June. Surely not a brilliant idea.)

Whatever you do, do not miss Richard’s two part series on the disturbing science of magic.

See you next week!