Lab Notes
Searching for sister Earth
In last year’s blockbuster movie Interstellar, Matthew McConaughey leads a team of astronauts on a quest to find a new planet like Earth, after humanity collectively destroys the climate on the only home we’ve got...
Igniting space weather
In March 1989, a powerful eruption from the Sun slammed into the Earth’s magnetic field and took down a regional power grid in Canada,...
Tracking wildfire smoke
It’s already been a challenging wildfire season in Colorado, with crews currently battling four major fires around the state. Driven by an exceptionally hot...
Hitching a ride to orbit
On April 23, SpaceX launched another crew of astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), the third successful mission of the commercial crew transport...
Leaving science to the scientists
When Pope Francis addressed Congress last month he asserted that “climate change is a problem that can no longer be left to a future generation,” casting it as a moral issue rather than a political one. His comments echoed a letter about the environment released by ...
Akatsuki returns from the dead
It is Dec. 7, 2015. We’re in Sagamihara, Japan, a little southwest of Tokyo. On a clear day like today, you can just make...
Are we alone in the universe?
This is one of humanity’s most fundamental and persistent questions. The answer has always seemed, until recently, elusive and out of reach. But this is beginning to change. Biologists have been deepening our understanding of what kinds of environments life might ...
The OSIRIS-REx mission: To Bennu and back
On Sept. 8, 2016, Dr. Vicky Hamilton watched as NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification Security, Regolith Explorer) lifted clear of Cape Canaveral’s...
Engineering the climate
Last month at a conference in Paris, 195 countries adopted a landmark agreement on how to respond to the Earth’s changing climate. The agreement...
Experiencing research
Imagine if you could test-drive your anticipated career before going through all of the effort and expense of obtaining the necessary education. It’s not...
Catching the solar eclipse
More than a century ago, Albert Einstein proposed a new theory of gravity, suggesting that concentrations of matter warp the underlying fabric of space,...
Unraveling misconceptions of climate change
To those of us living in Boulder and surrounding communities, it may come as a surprise that many people remain unconvinced that the use of fossil fuels is the main contributor to current climate change. But before diving into the discussion of the consequences of ...
