From roughneck to Principle Investigator of Hubble’s Wide Field/Planetary Camera, Jim Westphal showed just how far competence, curiosity, and a flawless bullshit filter can take you.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
Sometimes people ask me why I write about so many different topics. My answer is always the same. “Because that’s astronomy, too.”
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
Evolution has no goal, but there are things that it stumbles onto over and over again. If the other-worldly octopus is any indication, intelligence could be common wherever complex life appears.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
Reality need not conform to our preferences. To complain that multiverses are “outlandish” or “unscientific” is to ignore the history of scientific discovery.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
The Cosmos itself is the ultimate high energy particle physics experiment.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
It’s easy to tell this airplane wasn’t designed by a postmodernist; it flies! Science: When it really matters, nothing even comes close.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
In some ways we are creatures out of our time. Behaviors that once served us well can be dangerous in a world where the only constant is change.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.”
Astronomy Magazine asked me to write a piece about what the iconic Hubble Space Telescope image of the Eagle Nebula has meant to me personally. The short answer: It’s been a wild ride!
During the Dutch Golden Age, did Johannes Vermeer use optical devices to capture light, detail, and perspective as never before? If he did, does that make him a fraud, or instead an altogether different kind of genius?
Republished from my monthly Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.(Photo of Vermeer’s The Music Lesson from The Royal Collection, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II)
There are a record breaking three Category 4 hurricanes and a new tropical depression in this August 30, 2015 image of the Pacific Ocean taken with NASA’s GOES-15 satellite. We depend on our ability to observe Earth from space. So why is Congress gutting the program?
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.”
Over his 30 year career as an internationally known astrophysicist, Dr. Jeff Hester was a key member of the team that repaired the Hubble Space Telescope. With one foot always on the frontiers of knowledge, he has been mentor, coach, team leader, award-winning teacher, administrator and speaker, to name a few of the hats he has worn. His Hubble image, the Pillars of Creation, was chosen by Time Magazine as among the 100 most influential photographs in history.