Fireworks In this age of digital wizardry, where one can conjure great feats of the imagination with relative ease, sometimes the old, analog displays dazzle us the most. Few things capture human attention more than pretty exploding ordinances. In the 21st century, even fireworks displays depend on computers and intricately plotted sequencings developed by algorithms. […]
Electrical Air A recent scientific study might redefine the phrase “out of thin air.” Interestingly, this redefinition could complete the cliche’s evolutionary circle. We utter the expression when we encounter something seemingly arising from no clear antecedent as if a magician conjured the subject. According to the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, the idea is
The Wallace Line & Biogeography When the age of exploration yielded to a period not simply of unlocking new areas of the globe, but of serious, timely examinations of those areas, the study of Earth’s biology began in earnest. In the middle of the 18th century, Carl Linnaeus noticed patterns in the similarities and differences
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No Mow May Few things have obtained the hegemony in the American landscape as that of the short, manicured lawn. Aesthetic edges and flat seas of green can appeal to our sense of geometry and order. But these yards are a relatively modern invention. Humans transitioned from natural spaces to gardens and grasslands for livestock
Horsepower Sometimes the units we use are downright bizarre. The metric system makes all sorts of sense, but, in the United States, we’ve decided to stick with standards that include the width of human feet (foot), the width of human thumbs (inch), the amount of land a yoke of oxen could plow in a day
500 Days in Timecave “I said: ‘Already? Surely not.’ I hadn’t finished my book.” –Beatriz Flamini On 21 November 2021, mountaineer and endurance athlete Beatriz Flamini descended into a Spanish cave. Russia had not invaded Ukraine. Queen Elizabeth II wasn’t dead. The James Webb Space Telescope had not yet probed the cosmos. When Flamini emerged from the cave
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Apgar When a baby joins our planet today, doctors or nurses evaluate them at one minute old and again at five minutes old, using a system called the Apgar Score. Five attributes each receive a score of 0-2, making the overall score a range between 0 and 10. If you have a child in modern times,
Tree Speak and the Wood Wide Web Traditionally, we have viewed trees as individuals, stoic as they compete for sunlight, survive storms, and slowly grow from tiny seeds to monstrous sentinels. This viewpoint is human, a sort of anthropomorphized version of a natural-resource economy or a misunderstanding of Darwinism. Only the strong trees endure, as they
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Trinity Batter my heart, three-person’d God — John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. — Vishnu, Bhagavad Gita In 1938, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman discovered the possibility of nuclear fission. Physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch realized the breakdown of radioactive elements could produce a weapon of planetary proportions.
The Center Spins A couple of years ago we learned we might need to reevaluate the layout of the planet that we learn in grade school. Instead of the quartet of crust, mantle, liquid outer core, and solid inner core, researchers used waves from earthquakes to determine the inner core might actually be comprised of two distinct