Nevada Has a Glacier As we’ve learned over the past month, Nevada boasts remarkable natural splendor. With huge mountains, spectacular canyons, world-class lakes, and expansive deserts, the state has more beauty than its reputation might suggest. Visiting the Silver State, one leaves with the notion that this area is an unheralded jewel. Following this trend, […]
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The Great North American Eclipse On 21 August 2017, around 2:30 in the afternoon, I sat in a baking parking lot at The Ohio State University. It was a Monday, and my wife had emerged from the Mathematics Tower to join me during a break between teaching classes. Wispy clouds hung in the sky but did
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Parade of Planets Gazing into the night sky can impart a viewer with a sobering sense of perspective. The billions of stars out there. The millions of years the light took to travel from distant galaxies. It’s easy to be overwhelmed with a feeling of unimportance, as if we’re a speck of sand on a
Sylacauga In the last issue, we traveled to the strangely-named Benld, Illinois, to investigate a close encounter with a meteorite. In 1938, some humans had the closest recorded brush with a meteorite impact. Just 50 feet away, a space rock hit a garage, went through the ceiling of a car, its cushion, its floorboard, bounced
The Benld Meteorite The scene: Benld, Illinois. The date: 29 September 1938. This story offered two strange things to my world. The larger anecdote we’ll get to in a bit, but let’s start with the second, smaller interesting point. How in the world do you pronounce Benld? What is a Benld? Who is or was
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