“Ancient religion and modern science agree: We are here to give praise. Or, to slightly tip the expression, to pay attention.” So says novelist/critic John Updike in a new book on The Meaning of Life compiled by David Friend and the editors of Life magazine.
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Droplets produced by a sneeze • CDC Public Health Image Library (Public Domain)
We don’t need cold virus, but cold virus needs us
AH-CHOO!!! Excuse me. I had meant to write about something profound this morning, the origin of the universe, perhaps, or the evolution of consciousness. But, you see, I have this…
Photo by Alejandro Barba on Unsplash
No place for politicians to meddle
After the turmoil and confusion that accompanied the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, you may not want to hear any more about Washington and sex. But there is another story that has been quietly unfolding — about Washington, sex, and science — that deserves a wider airing.
Reconstruction of the Iceman as it was discovered • Photo by Thilo Parg (CC BY-SA 4.0)
DNA magic may reveal some of the Iceman’s secrets
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?
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.