science

What Do Raindrops Look Like in Outer Space?

How Arizona’s Monsoons Got Me Chasing Storms on Titan

Living in Tucson, Arizona—a Sonoran desert city surrounded by tall mountains—can make you obsess about rain. In 1993, I had just moved into a new office at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory that had a floor-to-ceiling view of the 9,000-foot-high Catalina Mountains. I had a ringside seat to an art gallery of beautiful convective cloud towers, which send hot air up over the desert mountains on late summer afternoons. Rain was rare, but when it happened, it came in a torrent. It would soak the soil and …

By Jonathan Lunine |

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When Birders With Binoculars Trump Supercomputers

If You Want to Know Which Species Are Going Extinct, Don’t Use an Algorithm. Count Ducks at Christmas.

By Lisa Margonelli |

It was just after dawn on January 3 and a freezing wind blew around my binoculars and into my face as I stood scanning a steely Atlantic bay. Suddenly, where …

The Man With the Vision That Built Caltech

Robert Andrew Millikan's Ambition Transformed Not Only the School, but Also Southern California's Place in the World

By Judith Goodstein |

When Robert Andrew Millikan arrived in Pasadena, California, in 1921, he was already the revered author of physics textbooks used across the country. He counted among his scientific accomplishments the …

How We Discovered the Sierra Nevada Snowpack Is at a 500-Year Low

By Measuring the Widths of Centuries-Old Trees and Collecting Deadwood, My Team and I 'Read' the History of California's Climate

By Valerie Trouet |

In 2005, I moved to the U.S. from Belgium to study the influence of climate on wildfires in the Sierra Nevada over the last five centuries. As part of this …

When Americans Understood That Weather Was Connected to Larger Forces

Two Hundred Years After New England's First Great Hurricane, We Ask Very Different Questions About the Nature of Storms

By Sean Munger |

Two hundred years ago this week, the Great September Gale struck New England. The “gale” swamped the coastlines of five states with storm surges up to 15 feet. It reduced …

The Potential for Life on Jupiter’s Moon

NASA’s Europa Flyby Mission Has Tantalized Scientists Eager for Clues About Possible Alien Life

by Robert Pappalardo |

This week we are one step closer to understanding a world in our solar system that I believe has the best chance of supporting life beyond our own planet. NASA …


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