Lab Notes

Four billion miles from the Earth on New Year’s Eve, a spacecraft traveling at 32,000 miles per hour zoomed past a tiny object roughly...

In late September, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg led the largest global climate strike in history, inspiring 7.6 million people in 185 countries to urge...

Imagine boarding a brand new Boeing 747 on your way to Seattle. When you reach your destination a few hours later, after unloading the...

In 1966, astronomer Olin Wilson started what would become a decades-long pursuit, searching for an answer to a simple question. Wilson knew that observations...

During the first two weeks of December, delegates from around the world are meeting in Madrid for the latest round of international negotiations to...

When a huge space-rock fell from the sky 66 million years ago, it quickly brought an end to the age of the dinosaurs. Rat-like...

In 1916, Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicted ripples in the fabric of space known as gravitational waves. Just as accelerating electrons create...

In 2012, a Dutch foundation called Mars One announced plans to establish a permanent human colony on Mars, with the first settlers arriving in...

In the 1960s, the Apollo missions to the moon inspired a generation of scientists and engineers to pursue careers in space exploration. On the heels of those successes, the Voyager missions to the outer solar system inspired my generation. I vividly remember the ...

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 ...

More than a century ago, Albert Einstein proposed a new theory of gravity, suggesting that concentrations of matter warp the underlying fabric of space,...

Four miles from the launch pad, standing on the roof of the 44-story vehicle assembly building where NASA constructed the space shuttles, I hold...