A World Split Apart

When I was in 4th grade in Vermont, Mrs. Howe showed us a world map. And I immediately said, "Doesn't it look like North and South America were split away from Europe and Africa?" And, since it was 1958, Mrs. Howe replied, "It does, doesn't it? But that's just a coincidence."

Attack of the Subspecies

The pattern looks like this: You learn a little about something—vaccines, nutrition, climate, whatever—and your confidence shoots up. You've read an article! You watched a documentary! You feel like an expert. This is the peak of Mount Stupid, and we have all stood on its summit at one time or another, gazing out over the landscape of our own ignorance and mistaking it for mastery.

Dating The Universe

In a previous essay, I wrote about how scientists date things on Earth—bones, pottery, volcanic ash, the occasional fossilized trilobite. But at some point the question shifts from "how old is this skull?" to "how old is that star?" And then, inevitably, "how old is everything?" The methods change completely, but the detective work is just as layered.

The Case of the Missing Sister

She was the kind of dame who lit up a room—every room, simultaneously, for a hundred million years. A hot blue number in a cluster of hot blue numbers, the kind of star that makes astronomers loosen their collars and reach for their spectroscopes. They called her crew the Seven Sisters, which was funny, because most people could only count six. Somebody was missing. Somebody was always missing. And in this business, when a dame goes missing, there is always a story. The question is whether you are going to like it.

Dating The Past

When I was a kid in Vermont, I read about this guy in England who found a Neanderthal skull fragment in a gravel pit. Now, our property had several sand pits on it that my sisters and I used to play in. So, naturally, I figured I was just a few holes away from discovering a skull of my own. I was at once fascinated by and also repulsed by the idea.

I Really Don't Carrington, Do U?

In 1859, the Carrington Event hit a world that ran on muscle, steam, and paper. Today, it would hit a world that runs on electricity, satellites, and microchips. The physics hasn't changed—but our vulnerability has.

It Takes (More Than) Two

Did you know that the Bible does not say Adam and Eve were the first humans? It describes them as being specially created by God (El) but doesn't say they weren't any humans around before them. In fact, when Cain is cast out because he and his brother just couldn't get along, he goes on to "build a city". For whom?!?

Mapping The Future

In 1994, the height of my career as a corporate instructor of computer programming, one of my assignments took me to Scottsdale, Arizona—a place I'd only visited once, as a kid, in 1961. The purpose: to bring a professor and his graduate students up to speed in Windows programming in a week, so they could get on with their real task: digitizing a map and calculating the route and duration of a trip from Point A to Point B. That's right, boys and girls and all: There was a time, a mere 30 years ago, when maps lived on paper instead of your telephone, and ended more marriages than any other weapon since Aqua Tofana. And yet, even paper maps had a long history in different mediums before they got to where they could be bent, folded, or mutilated.

About Macadamias

Macadamia nuts, known for their rich, buttery flavor and delightful crunch, are considered a delicacy in many parts of the world. These nuts, which originate from the subtropical rainforests of Australia, have a fascinating journey from their natural habitat to the shelves of your local grocery store. This essay delves into the origin, cultivation, harvesting, and packaging of macadamia nuts.

Keeping Time

I don't think people appreciate the developmental magnitude of the entire world using one common, utterly accurate clock. While early human groups recorded the phases of the Moon some 30,000 years ago in their cave paintings, we have been able to accurately measure a minute only for the past 400 years. Yet our entire modern world depends on accurate and universal agreement on time down to an incredibly small fraction of a second.

Ancient Roman Digital-to-Analog Converter

The readout is a Greek slave whose hands and feet have been bound in such a way that the digits extend over a track. A circular cutting blade fits into the track, suspended from overhead by a line made of cat gut. The blade is made to spin at a high speed by a second Greek slave who pedals a clever gear contraption designed by Pliny the Younger.

Everyday Science

We are surrounded by technologies past centuries would have described as miraculous and the work of gods. Yet, most of us have no idea how our devices work. Sure, we can use them…with varying degrees of success. But knowing, even at a superficial level, the scientific principles that make a device work, can make our use of that device more efficient, even allowing benefits that we wouldn't otherwise have suspected were available.

Planetary Alignment

A month ago, for the first time in 18 years, five planets—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn—were sequentially aligned and visible at dawn throughout the month. Tonight, while the faster moving of the planets has left the configuration, there are still enough of them to impress.

Is The Number of Earthquakes Increasing?

One of the terrific things about government science is the free availability of the information we've paid through our taxes to gather. Thus the United States Geological Survey maintains the USGS earthquake site with all kinds of goodies for the earthquake aficionado ranging from real-time earthquake reporting to downloadable historical data. Recently I downloaded a list of all earthquakes above magnitude 3, that have occurred since 1900. What I found shook me up a bit (pun intended: we may as well laugh about it!).

Time and Tides

When I was a teenager in Saint Augustine, Florida, I worked summers as a lifeguard. My favorite was Crescent Beach, between Saint Augustine Beach and Daytona. I liked it because I actually preferred a beach with hardly any people on it, and the people at Crescent Beach at that time were mostly folks who had rented condos or cottages along the beach. Many of these people were not accustomed to the beach or the ocean, and since I was a lifeguard, they would ask me questions.

Tubes, Transistors, and Alien Technology

When I joined the Navy back in the '70s, I was directed toward a "rating" (job) of Electronics Technician, which more or less describes the folks who repair radar and radio. Towards this end, I studied electronics at the Navy 'A' School in Great Lakes, Illinois; and, as I did so I discovered a rather odd mystery that took me decades to figure out. To appreciate this mystery, and its solution, one must have a rudimentary understanding of electronics. And I can give you enough of that, right here, right now. I promise it won't hurt.

Old King Coal

One might ask, why would people leave an idyllic life on the family farm and move to the city to work in a factory? Of course, today most people don't live in the country and so can't imagine anything more dreary than farm life. But remember, people love what they're used to. And British of the 1700s did not want to leave their farms.

So Parliament, which was composed mostly of industrialists, passed laws that heavily taxed farms. Unable to pay their taxes, farmers were forced to leave their homes and went to the city to find work…which was conveniently to be had in the factories the industrialists owned. However, factories paid notoriously low wages. For a family to survive, everyone, even very young children, had to work. That, of course, meant no school. The family and its descendants were mere fodder for the machines.

Bridges

Humans are not the only creatures on Earth that build bridges, but we are the only ones who build bridges intended for more than a single use. Bridges have become so ubiquitous in human culture that, in addition to being used as metaphors ("We'll build a bridge of love and kindness reaching to the other side" as Olivia Newton-John sang in "The River's Too Wide") they have spawned unique fears (gephyrophobia, the fear of bridges), a genre of photography and of course an engineering specialty.

How Long Can You Tread Water?

Biblically speaking, nothing seems to piss God off more than members of the faithful who refuse to heed prophecies.

For example, the prophet Jeremiah, who continued to warn his fellow Israelites that God would punish them if they didn't "turn away from their sins" until he was completely ignored, predicted that if they didn't heed his warnings, the Jews would be scattered from their homeland and persecuted. As you must know, the Jews continued to ignore Jeremiah and, sure enough, they were scattered from their homeland and persecuted. Repeatedly.

Shine On Harvest Moon

As you know, the Earth takes a little more than 365 days to circle the sun. We judge this by the stars. For example, at sunset on any particular day, the handle of the Big Dipper will be in a certain position. Six months later, at sunset, the handle of the Dipper will be in the opposite position. A year from that starting point, the handle will have returned to its original position.

Global Warning

A little over 1½ million years ago, when the continents of Earth had drifted to almost their present locations and the very first hominids (our oldest recognizable ancestors) had appeared, a group of bright stars called the Scorpius-Centaurus OB association, passed within 150 light-years of Earth. Although to us the sky appears to be the same night after night (with the exception of the locations of the Moon and planets), astronomers know this is not so.