What Einstein really thought
A new Einstein biography has just been released. Despite the great man’s justified celebrity, many misconceptions are repeated. Take his ideas about religion. Some claim that Einstein believed in a personal God. Others…
Saturn at its best
In our culture of publicity and hard-sell, it’s tempting to exaggerate. Even with celestial events, the media often cry wolf. But one planet never disappoints. Through any telescope with more than 30x, Saturn…
Picturing the universe: Hard – or impossible?
After giving two major lectures this past week, questions from the audience made me realize why everyone’s frustrated when trying to understand the universe as a whole. Astronomy is truly divided into two…
Runaway star
Can you get out of here? That’s the question pondered for centuries: How to leave Earth permanently. A cannonball fired upward has always returned. With a greater explosive charge and a higher speed,…
Hard times for writers
Today’s column had its origins this afternoon when a Woodstock storeowner sighed. The problem? He’d laboriously written a book on a worthy socially oriented topic, but found it impossible to get a publisher…
Newest discoveries: What’s hot & what’s not
The mass media latch onto a limited topic-range of astronomical discoveries and amplify these to the world. The public, generally clueless about the heavens, thus receive information that’s usually limited to a few…
The IBEX Ribbon:The first “warning light” of danger?
The idea of a continuous stream of particles flowing outward from the Sun was first suggested by British astronomer Richard Carrington in 1859. A century later, physicist Eugene Parker said that comet tails…
Our galaxy’s antimatter fountain
In 1928, the shy, brilliant physicist Paul Dirac predicted the existence of antimatter. When it was actually discovered seven years later, Dirac should have become a household name. But his yearning to avoid…
Comet PanStarrs may be visible – or not
Ah, comets: They drive us crazy. We always know where they’re going to be, but figuring out how bright they’ll get is another story. This Tuesday and Wednesday evening, March 12 and 13,…
Those new lights: will they hurt you?
We’re all switching to those new lights. Well, they’re not so new. Compact fluorescents have been around for several years. Even light-emitting diode (LED) lighting, which is expensive but gaining popularity, is no…
