Facts So Romantic

What is a species? It’s a question that has agonized scientists since well before Darwin. With some exceptions, the thinking has landed on an evidently firm reproductive barrier: Members…

Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.Like cosmic hard drives, black holes pack troves of data into compact spaces. But ever since Stephen Hawking calculated…

Talk of “Mother Trees,” from a scientist studying plant life, can sound fanciful, like something out of a fairy tale. Suzanne Simard is here to tell you that it’s not. For the past…

In 2002, David M. Morens, now Senior Scientific Advisor at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, wrote an essay called “At the Deathbed of Consumptive Art.” It featured…

Earth is most fortunate to have vast webs of magnetic fields surrounding it. Without them, much of our atmosphere would have been gradually torn away by powerful solar winds long ago, making…

Recently I was in San Francisco, a city known for its tech companies, steep hills, and fierce winds. Each day I’d run around the neighborhood and up through the park, ending with a spectacular…

Larry Mayer, a marine geophysicist, gets shivers when he looks at a night sky of stars. He understands why we explore outer space and NASA has spent billions mapping our extraterrestrial…

Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.Of all the known particles in the universe, only photons outnumber neutrinos. Despite their abundance, however, neutrinos…

From the newswire:Award-winning magazine and fast-growing science brand poised for growthAn investor group of super-fans has banded together as a single ownership group to acquire Nautilus,…

SCIENCE MATTERSMore than ever. Science gave us the light bulb.Science gave us the tractor.Science gave us the vaccine.Science showed us the atom.Science showed us the gene.Science showed…