The Cosmic Drama of Betelgeuse

Number of words: 1,635 Betelgeuse is an incredibly big star located about 700 light years away from Earth. It is about 800-times wider than the Sun and nearly 15-times as massive.. It is also the second brightest star after Rigel in the Orion constellation, in the northern hemisphere. Recently, Betelgeuse’s brightness began to dim in … Read more

The Future of Planetary Defense: DART and Beyond

Number of words: 341 Didymos, a 2,650-foot-wide asteroid, has an atypical cosmic companion— a 535 foot-wide satellite named Didymoon (10). These new two celestial bodies are not making a dangerous rendezvous with Earth, but they do provide an interesting opportunity for an apocalyptic dress rehearsal. NASA and ESA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will head … Read more

The Fine Line Between Saving Airlines and Supporting Corporations

Number of words: 771 The U.S. government is enacting measures to save the airlines, Boeing, and similarly affected corporations. While we clearly insist that these companies must be saved, there may be ethical, economic, and structural problems associated with the details of the execution. As a matter of fact, if you study the history of … Read more

The Evolution of Earth’s Magnetic Field

Number of words: 712 In a study appearing March 15 in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Scripps Oceanography researchers Dave Stegman, Leah Ziegler, and Nicolas Blanc provide new estimates for the thermodynamics of magnetic field generation within the liquid portion of the early Earth’s mantle and show how long that field was available. … Read more

The Role of Home Gardens in Preventing Ecological Collapse

Number of words: 960 There are, by some estimates, more than 40 million acres of green lawns in the U.S.,  making turf grass the largest irrigated crop in the country. A new book suggests that landowners repurpose some of their landscaping for another purpose: creating a “Homegrown National Park,” a connected network of more natural … Read more

The Rise of Nationalism: A Threat to Global Stability

Number of words: 2,289 In January and February of this year, there was audible popping of champagne corks in certain quarters of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. What some observers had long seen as this era’s giant geopolitical bubble had finally begun to deflate. China’s Communist Party leadership, the thinking went, was at last coming … Read more