May the Forces Be With You Yeah, I’m a day late. When you write articles on specific days of the week you can’t fight the calendar. And this year 4 May landed on a Tuesday. Nobody likes to read about a holiday, no matter how fourced, after it happens. I could have posted this episode on […]
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The Iron Catastrophe Everyone alive today owes their existence to a catastrophe. To explain that seemingly paradoxical statement, let’s foray into a brief overview of the universe, our sun, and the planet, courtesy of Columbia University. Somewhere around 13.8 billion years ago, the Big Bang kicked things off. There was hydrogen and only hydrogen. The
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The Danish Temblor In our previous issue, we explored the recent confirmation of a theory that Earth has five layers instead of the previously believed four. The standard model included the crust, the mantle, the outer core, and the inner core. Before 1936, the models would have indicated the earth had just three layers: crust, mantle, core.
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The Inner Inner Most children glean a bit about the geologic makeup of our planet in primary school. We learn the Earth is comprised of four layers: the crust, the mantle, the outer core, and the inner core. The basic construction of our planet by layer – image by BBC The crust is the layer
Mt. Greylock – Massachusetts’ High Point This edition of the High Points series takes us to the northwestern corner of Massachusetts. Mt. Greylock rises 3,489 feet above sea level. Though the peak is often associated with the Berkshire Mountains, it is technically part of the Taconic Mountains. The whole region is filled with craggy goodness. The Green
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The Coastline Paradox What country has the longest coastline in the world? If you answered Canada, peel off a gold star and stick it to your shirt. Great work! OK, now what country has the second-longest coastline? Russia? The United States? Australia? Maybe you figure the question is a trick and answered something along the
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Stick Your Head in a Particle Accelerator The Large Hadron Collider, operated by CERN, the famed European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world’s biggest particle accelerator. Also known as “atom smashers” or “supercolliders,” accelerators are massive machines that use electromagnetic fields to launch particles at extraordinarily high speeds, usually near the speed of light. Particle
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In Which Talking Birds Parrot New Content [Editor’s Note: This article is an unusual addition to the project. It was the result of a promise to produce new content on a deadline, while being away from a computer. The videos are well worth your time, so we’re happy to feature this piece in the
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There Is No Blue “And jealous now of me, you gods, because I befriend a man, one I saved as he straddled the keel alone, when Zeus had blasted and shattered his swift ship with a bright lightning bolt, out on the wine-dark sea.” — Homer, The Odyssey, Book V In 1858, then-future British Prime Minister William
Croagh Patrick In 441 AD, a man named Patricius ascended a peak called Cruachán Aigle or Cruach Aigle. The exact etymology of this name is partially lost to the ages, but it comes out meaning something along the lines of “Stack of Eagles” or “Eagle’s Stack.” On the summit, he fasted for 40 days. We know this man