Richard Panek

Light was thought to travel through aether like waves on a lakeShutterstock Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . You might know the anecdote. In April 1900, Lord Kelvin, one of the most prominent physicists of the 19th century, stands in the speaker’s well of the Royal Society in London. […]

Far from being romantic heroes, starless planets may be a dime a dozen.

When Copernicus told us that Earth is not the center of the universe, we collectively cried, “Oh, no!,” and have spent the past 470 years fanning ourselves silly, trying to recover from the blow to our species’ ego. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . So goes the mythology of […]