Lab Notes
Predicting seasons of the sun
Although you might take it for granted that the sun is extremely stable over time, the star at the center of our solar system...
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...
Colonizing Mars the SpaceX way
OK, so who is ready to go live on Mars? I saw a few hands go up there in the Boulder Weekly readership. Now...
Boosting solar physics
Shortly after the financial crash of 2008, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to stimulate the economy with $787 billion in...
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,...
Diving into Saturn
I finally arrive on the Caltech campus in Pasadena, California, around 3:30 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 15 to bear witness to the final gravitational dance...
Forecasting nature
In 1973, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke suggested that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Accurate predictions of the weather several...
Drifting in space and time
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...
Scouting for life on Mars
In 2012, a Dutch foundation called Mars One announced plans to establish a permanent human colony on Mars, with the first settlers arriving in...
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...
Living with a star
Just after Christmas 2019, a NASA spacecraft soared past Venus toward the inner solar system, and near the end of January 2020, it passed...
Chasing Arctic ice
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...