caleb scharf
We Never Know Exactly Where We’re Going in Outer Space
Adventures in space travel remind us how imprecisely we measure reality.
Take Our Virtual Trip to Mars
See where NASA’s Mars 2020 mission will go and what it may find.
The Universe Has Made Almost All the Stars It Will Ever Make
Black holes are cosmic dimmers.
How Life Could Continue to Evolve
On the origin of an interstellar species.
Mars Is a Second-Rate Backup Plan
On the red planet, existential threats abound.
The Trouble with Counting Alien Civilizations
Life on Earth is a sketchy guide to intelligent life in the cosmos.
Galaxy Simulations Offer a New Solution to the Fermi Paradox
Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog. As far as anyone knows, we have always been alone. It’s just us on this pale blue dot, “home to everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of,” as Carl Sagan so memorably put it. No one has called or dropped by. And yet […]
The Selfish Dataome
Does the data we produce serve us, or vice versa?
Why Do So Many Scientists Want to be Filmmakers?
The problem with C.P. Snow’s famous two-cultures hypothesis.
This Will Help You Grasp the Sizes of Things in the Universe
Caleb Scharf wants to take you on an epic tour. His latest book, The Zoomable Universe, starts from the ends of the observable universe, exploring its biggest structures, like groups of galaxies, and goes all the way down to the Planck length—less than a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a meter. […]
