Hubble Tension Our current cosmological history begins with the Big Bang. The model suggests that if one could go back far enough in time, the discernible universe would be packed into a highly dense and hot quantum, which then exploded into the dynamo reality we experience today. First proposed by Catholic priest and physicist Georges Lemaître, […]
The Irish Calendar And then the moon, like to a silver bow New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night of our solemnities. — Willam Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream We recently explored the differences between the typical, astronomical reckoning of seasons and the meteorological method. The former employs celestial geometry cues, while the latter depends on average
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The Migration of the Sequoia When he returned to camp, and there related the wonders he had seen, his companions laughed at him and doubted his veracity, which previously they had considered to be very reliable. He affirmed his statement to be true, but they still thought it “too much of a story” to believe—thinking
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Shivanasamudra Falls Though we’re big proponents of experiencing the outdoors in all seasons, most people go through stretches when they cannot travel or don’t have the time to be in nature. In these spells, encountering the beauty of the physical world virtually can benefit one’s mental health or take the edge off of bubbling wanderlust.
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Small Brains & Gunshots Some critters have all the luck. The platypus might be the strangest animal on the planet, or, at least, possess the highest number of bizarre traits. But the duckbill doesn’t have a monopoly on interesting attributes. In the project’s early days, we investigated the snapping shrimp, also known as the pistol shrimp. This Lynchian
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Seasonal Lag In the previous article, we learned multiple ways exist to demarcate seasons on Earth. The traditional method of observing the change from one season to the next depends on the interplay between our planet’s axial tilt and the sun. One of the interesting aspects of this method presents at the solstices. The longest day
Meteorological Seasons vs. Astronomical Seasons In our investigation of the development of Leap Day, we learned the seasons would drift on our calendars if the intercalary date didn’t exist. One could argue that seasons – the result of axial tilt – are the most important planetary aspect of human existence. For millennia, in many places, people have planned
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Leap Day The rarest date on the calendar is February 29. If we assume all days of the year are just as likely birthdates, a human has a 1 in 4,161 chance to enter Earth on leap day. That’s about 0.07% of the population, which would mean approximately 232,000 Americans were born on 29 February. Why
Odysseus Few literary characters rise to a level of timelessness in which their stories survive millennia. Still, fewer characters see their names become eponyms folded into multiple languages. One such gargantuan of the page is Homer’s Odysseus. If you’re into the Romans or the Irish, you might know him better as Ulysses. Though the champion
Platypus, Platypuses, & Platypodes On this whacky world of ours, a scad of critters compete for the title of most bizarre. The variety of life is so immense that picking one is likely a fool’s chore. Certain faunae (arcane pluralization foreshadowing) objectively qualify for a shortlist of the most bizarre creatures. One such beast is
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