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.”
Genetic algorithms are revolutionizing our world by reconnecting engineering with its four-billion-year-old roots.
Republished from my monthly Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
For the first time in history we can tell the story of our existence beginning with the origin of the universe, and ending with you sitting there reading this article. And an amazing story it is!
Republished from my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.”
Much of the economic discussion between liberals and conservatives is an argument over how to arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. The only question that really matters is how to keep the whole ship from going under. (The final installment in an 8 part series on Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.”)
Whether as inherited capital, high incomes or the coffers of corporate “persons,” money begats money as never before. In a modern capitalist economy, that is really all you need to know. (Part 7 in a series on Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.”)
The human brain craves the sensation of knowing like a drug addict craves the next fix. If real knowledge is uncomfortable or not at hand, we are quite content to just make something up, then convince ourselves it’s real. In a world where knowledge matters, that’s dangerous.
The iconic saguaro cactus gives the desert an otherwordly beauty. That beauty does not exist in isolation. It embodies the fascinating and awe-inspiring processes that have shaped the universe, going all the way back to the Big Bang itself.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
Looking at room full of amateur astronomers, gathered for the Okie-Tex Star Party under the spectacularly dark skies of the Oklahoma Panhandle, I am reminded of my own roots and those who helped me discover the universe.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
A strong fight-or-flight reaction served our evolutionary ancestors well. If the leopard catches you, that’s it! But today a visceral response to a not-so-mortal threat seldom improves things. If you want to get a handle on those intense, counterproductive bouts of emotion, start by understanding where fight-or-flight came from in the first place.
Alone, 100 feet underwater, with a shark in its element, I am overwhelmed by a mixture of awe, beauty, joy, and intellectual wonder at the world that brings us together. In that moment, I experience just what science is all about.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
Chaos is a sticky wicket for science. There are things a correct theory like climate change cannot predict, but there are a lot of things that it can. It’s important to understand which is which.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
For biological organisms, interstellar travel is hopelessly difficult, and probably pointless. For sentient machines, however, home is the environment you were built for.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
It would be fun to think there is a flourishing interstellar civilization of humanoid aliens out there. But then it would also be nice to believe in unicorns and midichlorians. It would be nice, but they probably aren’t there.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
Gilding the lily makes everybody look bad. When the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory detected ripples in the fabric of space-time from a pair of merging black holes, it was a technological and scientific accomplishment without peer! But LIGO did not “discover” gravity waves.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
Fundamental change is always messy. As science tackles the complex processes that shape the real world it is having to reinvent itself on the fly. Welcome to the Wild West!
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
As science has evolved from simple observation to deep understanding, each new way of thinking about the world has transformed not only science, but human society. That evolution is far from over.
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.