You may have heard the old rhyme: “I never saw a purple cow, I never hope to see one; But I can tell you, anyhow, I’d rather see than be one.”
Photo by Ryan Song on Unsplash
Inis Mór, Aran Islands, Ireland • Photo by Sonse (CC BY 2.0)
Briton’s maps reflect love for the landscape
A map is an invitation into a landscape. The maps of British cartographer Tim Robinson are irresistible invitations.
Photo by Paige Weber on Unsplash
For so many, the starry night is gone
Labor Day — traditionally the end of summer vacation. We are back from the mountains, the seashore, or sailing boats at sea, places where the sky is still inky dark and free of urban haze. Places where we had a chance to see the night sky as our grandparents saw it, in the days before electric lights and industrial pollution obliterated the stars.
Is this really necessary? • Photo by Romi Yusardi on Unsplash
Life is simple without sex
Some years ago, the humorists James Thurber and E. B. White wrote a book called Is Sex Necessary? It was not an altogether frivolous question and any biologist can tell you the answer: No.
Humanity's mark on the moon • NASA / Buzz Aldrin (Public Domain)
A lapse of will
Eighteen years ago [in 1969] the Apollo 11 spacecraft landed on the surface of the Moon, and for the first time a human stepped onto another world. That grand achievement was followed by five other manned lunar landings, the last of them in December 1972.
Recreations of Carboniferous labyrinthodonts • Photo by Tom Page (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Recreating a prehistoric landscape
As the writer John McPhee has pointed out, geologists inhabit scenes that no one ever saw — mountains, forests, rivers, and archipelagos long vanished from the face of the Earth. No, not vanished — almost vanished.
Photo by Sergiu Bacioiu (CC BY 2.0)
The men who paved the way for the theory of relativity
Ask the man in the street what is the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century and he will as likely as not reply, “the theory of relativity.” Many scientists will agree. Relativity underlies our present understanding of atoms and stars. It is the basis for our ideas about the origin and evolution of the universe. It is the very warp of the fabric of physics, the threads on which all else is woven.
Photo by [2Ni] on Unsplash
Roots of clay for family tree?
At the time Genesis was written, clay was the premier material of artisans. Of it were made containers, tablets for writing, and effigies of animals and men. So what was more natural than for the Creator to do his work in the same medium. According to the author of Genesis, the Lord took up clay into his hands and molded it into the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. And the first man.
A human oocyte undergoing IVF • ZEISS Microscopy (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Curiosity and boundaries
“Scientific curiosity is not an unbounded good.” One does not often hear those words, especially uttered by a scientist. They come from an essay by the octogenarian biochemist Erwin Chargaff in the May 21 [1987] issue of Nature.
Artist's impression of supernova remnant SN 1987A • ESO/L. Calçada (CC BY 3.0)
A blowup in the neighborhood?
The February [1987] supernova continues to shine brightly in southern skies. That exploding star is 160,000 light-years from Earth, in a companion galaxy of the Milky Way — and far enough away to pose no threat to us.