When I was in ninth grade, Miss Axton gave us a project. We were to build a replica of an ancient structure, and write a paper about it — why the structure was important, what it was used for, how it impacted culture, blah blah blah. For mine, I decided to do the Parthenon, largely [...]
Recreating the Big Bang: Slightly More Complicated Than Advertised
August 5th, 2009
A Different Kind of Plague
May 3rd, 2009
At first there were just a few in southern California. Within a few days they were appearing in New York and Texas. By the beginning of last week, it was nationwide, rapidly spreading to other countries. Now, less than a fortnight since the initial outbreak, it has spread to every corner of the Earth, except [...]
Tags: Q&A · sickness & healthness
Life in the Accretion Disc
September 10th, 2008
“Aren’t you nervous?”
“Nope.”
-Manhattan Project physicists Isidor Rabi and Kenneth Greisen, lying on the ground one minute before the first atomic bomb test, July 1945
“Now I’m scared.”
-Greisen, as the countdown hit 10 seconds
On the day of the The Trinity Test, Enrico Fermi offered a bet to any takers. Would the device incinerate the atmosphere? And if [...]
Let the Games Begin
August 8th, 2008
The Summer Olympics! A time when the finest athletes in the world can come together, run around, throw things, have their fluid specimens tested, and insist that yes, they’ve totally heard of Bahrain and can find it on a map. With the Games of the XXIX Olympiad just hours away, we here at AN wanted [...]
In a Galaxy Far, Far Away
June 25th, 2008
Last week, a group a scientists announced at a conference in France that they have discovered a trio of super-Earths a relatively short distance from our solar system. This is exciting news for the astronomy community, who pretty much have to kill one another in cold blood to make headlines these days—and even then it [...]
