The Summer Solstice Tuesday, 21 June, marks 2023’s summer solstice. The word solstice comes from the Latin solstitium, which combines sol (sun) and stit (stopped or stationary). Technically defined, the summer solstice is the point when one of Earth’s poles is tilted maximally toward the sun. Broadly defined, it is the day on which the sun reaches the highest position
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Skywalker and Depthdiver The Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places You’ll Go! is a fairly common graduation gift and for some people it is prophetic. If the book, published in 1990, had been around in the 1960s you might have been a true Nostradamus had you given a copy to Kathryn Sullivan. A couple of weeks ago she
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Mediocre Amateur Today I was feeling the wanderlust in a large way. The last quarter-year has been difficult for many of us who love traveling and exploring the outdoors in locations that aren’t necessarily in our areas. The desire for travel, however, doesn’t simply vanish during a quarantine. One benefit of modern life is the
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Plastics are amazing. Since the first man-made version was patented in 1856, plastics have brought forth countless benefits. But very few materials exist downside-free and plastics are no different. One of the main positives can also be a drawback. That tub you use as a storage bin will last forever,
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The Mother of Modern Physics Maria Salomea Skłodowska entered our orb in Warsaw, then part of the Russian empire, now the capital of Poland, on 7 November 1867. Her parents were both teachers, whose families had histories of involvement in Polish independence movements, and probably envisioned an erudite future for their youngest child. My guess,
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Prime-Period Cicadas Depending on where you are in eastern North America, every 13 or 17 years something magical happens, figuratively and literally. Out of the soil emerge broods, all at once, of Magicicada, otherwise known simply as cicadas. For most of the lives of these insects, they exist underground, sucking up the juices from deciduous trees. When
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Documenting Demise As we explored in the previous issue, Mt. St. Helens began to display activity in March 1980, a string of action that led to the largest recorded landslide and an incomprehensible lateral blast on May 18. This two-month period allowed geologists and amateur scientists time to study the mountain in the buildup. Many volcanologists
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The Mt. St. Helens Eruption Today is the 40th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Located in southern Washington’s Skamania County, the stratovolcano is 50 miles northeast of Portland and 100 miles south of Seattle. In early 1980 the mountain was 9,677 feet high, making it the fifth-highest peak in the state. Rising
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Intro to Clouds Clouds, how do they work? They’re all around us, a daily companion, perhaps relegated to the background. As the National Weather Service states, “They can weigh tens of millions of tons yet float in the atmosphere.” Do you make time for miracles? If, as I do, you make time for miracles, let’s discern
Nature’s Mothers This weekend is Mother’s Day. To celebrate I thought it might be fitting to send you some videos of mothers and children in the natural world. But how do you narrow that to a few examples? It’s like typing in “cat” or “dog” in a search engine and trying to rummage through the