Annalee Newitz is editor-in-chief of io9, a website that covers science and science fiction, and author of Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction. Before moderating a discussion on whether science fiction has the power to revolutionize science, she talked poetry, surrealism, and bagels in the Zócalo green room.
On April 15, 1935, one of the largest dust storms in U.S. history smothered Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle in a cloud thick enough to nearly blot out the noonday …
As you get into your car in the parking lot of the Trader Joe’s in Silver Lake, you might just be within arm’s reach of cannibals. Not the human kind–but …
The World Economic Forum ranks the United States 52nd in the world in the quality of its math and science education. What are we doing wrong? Arizona Daily Star education …
In the 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama challenged the nation to produce 100,000 excellent new science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) teachers by the year 2021. In …
The Nobel Prize in Physics just awarded to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura for their work on blue light-emitting diodes—LEDs as they are commonly known—reveals the extent to …
What happens when you bring together scientists and science fiction writers? Zócalo and the Arizona State University Center for Science and the Imagination brought physicist Lawrence M. Krauss and science …
Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, is generally considered the first work of science fiction. It explores, in scientific terms, the notion of synthetic life: Dr. Victor …
What can the deep geological history of the oceans tell us about the future?
This question is a difficult one. In fact, it is considerably easier to start with the opposite …
Did most astronauts grow up watching Star Trek—and is it possible they learned anything useful from the adventures of the USS Enterprise? Is it coincidence that Isaac Asimov was the …
