Mystery surrounds the well-preserved 4,000-year-old body of a man found recently in an Alpine glacier. Who was he? Why had he climbed so high above the valley floor? How did he die?
Articles from August 2020
Reconstruction of the Iceman as it was discovered • Photo by Thilo Parg (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Photo by Avery Evans on Unsplash
What quantum physics means to you — for $1
Dear Mr. Raymo, I am the editor of GeeWhiz magazine and a reader of your Globe column. Could you write an article for our magazine on the following questions:
Ted Geisel aka Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) • Library of Congress (Public Domain)
The odd critters of Seuss’s are matched by the zoos’s
Dr. Seuss in the science pages? You bet.
Trinity test, Alamogordo, 1945 • U.S. Department of Energy (Public Domain)
Nuclear sites: A lethal legacy across the land
At 5:29 a.m. Mountain War Time on July 16, 1945, the world’s first nuclear explosion occurred on the Alamogordo bombing range in the desert near White Sands, New Mexico.
Construction on the nano scale • CSIRO (CC BY 3.0)
The incredible shrinking technology
Welcome to the nanodecade. Nano, as in nanotechnology, nanocomputers, nanorobots. Nano, as in nanometer, or billionth of a meter. Small. Very, very, very small.
Gondwana rainforest, New South Wales, Australia • Image by Cgoodwin (CC BY-SA 3.0)
A world dreamed up, yet real
“If man had not encountered dragons and hippogriffs in dreams, he might never have conceived of the atom,” wrote the American social philosopher Lewis Mumford, who died [in 1990] at age 94.
Traditional Irish farming, ca. 1897 • National Library of Ireland
A last, unhurried paradise lost — to technology
Twelve years ago at the end of a spell of fine summer weather we could look out from our house in the rural west of Ireland and count a thousand haystacks. Field after field of haystacks, as far as the eye could see.
Aurelia aurita • Photo by Alexander Vasenin (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Jellyfish just go with the flow
It was the summer of the jellyfish. On almost every retreating tide the beach was jam-packed with jellies. A walk at water’s edge required constant attention to what was underfoot; few experiences are more unpleasant than stepping barefoot into a quivering cushion of jellyfish jelly.
Photo by Terry Ballard (CC BY 2.0)
15,000 years or so in the life of Scratch Flat
On this day exactly 200 years ago Gilbert White, the vicar of Selborne village in England, wrote this in his naturalist’s journal: “Made black currant-jelly. Finished cutting the tall hedges. Gathered some lavender.”
Photo by Kaushal Moradiya from Pexels
Cameras don’t lie but a photograph might
Photographs don’t lie. Or do they?