The Whitest White We learned the Blackest Black has some incredible applications, beyond turning objects into mind-melting black holes. A substance that can absorb nearly all the light that hits it can work marvels on telescopes or solar cells. The secret to carbon nanotubes – the structures that make the serious blacks possible – is to bounce […]
Eigengrau Close your eyes. What color do you see? Disregard any of the artifacts that linger from light sources that impacted your eyes before you closed them. Those kaleidoscopic blobs are fascinating, but they’re not what we’re after here. They should fade relatively quickly. Some people experience these light shows all the time, thanks
The Blackest Black Color is a prismatic subject, if we can strain an adjective to its limits. Are black and white colors? Open your box of crayons; white and black will likely nestle in the neat rows. So, they’re colors, right? In physical optics, however, black and white are not treated as colors. Check a
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The World’s First Forest If you had to guess, where would you place the planet’s oldest forest? The world’s oldest known tree – a bristlecone pine called Methuselah – is nearly 5,000 years old. Technical definitions of “forest” are nebulous, but they largely revolve around biomes that contain numerous trees. Forests see trees come and go, some
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Taters, the Space Laser Cat “Everyone loves Taters.” –Ryan Rogalin, Jet Propulsion Laboratory In our current understanding of the cosmos, nothing travels faster than light. All the incarnations of the electromagnetic spectrum move at 299,792,458 meters per second in a vacuum, which is approximately 186,000 miles per second or 671 million miles per hour. That’s some serious
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The Crabs of Christmas Island In 1615, about 200 miles south of the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra, Europeans first spied a 52-square-mile spit in the distance. Nearly three decades later, Captain William Mynors sailed aboard the Royal Mary for the East India Company. On 25 December 1643, Mynors spotted the same isle and decided to
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Mortal Flower That Perishes Like All That Is Pure One of life’s great small pleasures is the glory that emerges from translating proper native names into other languages. Sometimes we garner a euphonious moniker with a plain strict translation. For example, Katahdin is a musical name that means “Great Mountain.” While Maine’s High Point certainty is a
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Frisson You’re at a concert and hear a thrilling or moving musical snippet, perhaps a particularly soulful bit of vocals or a combination of instruments that seem to mimic a truth of the universe. You’re in a dark theater and watch a heartwarming bit of acting on the screen or stage that deftly displays complex
Artificial Intelligence – Part II [Editor’s Note: Normally, we do not replicate the prefaces to the newsletters on the website; often they do not pertain at all to the article at hand. This issue must stand as an exception. Other than the text immediately following, it’s important to add here that the article below
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Paleoburrows The science of paleontology relies heavily on fossils. This statement is a bit inane, as paleontology is defined as the study of prehistoric life, broadly covering anything that lived before the Holocene epoch (our current age, which stretches to a point a little more than 10,000 years ago). Obviously, to glean anything about organisms