If you could have looked up at the sky 4 billion years ago, you would have seen a sun much dimmer than ours today. And if you looked down at the Earth’s oceans, you would have seen an expanse of bobbing waves.
That’s a problem–a simple one, but a big one. And scientists have been wrestling with it for fifty years. Continue reading “Life Under A Faint Sun”
This post was originally published in “Download the Universe,” a multi-author blog about science ebooks edited by Carl Zimmer.
John McAfee’s Last Stand. By Joshua Davis. Published by Conde Nast.
Reviewed by Veronique Greenwood
January 3, 2013
Continue reading “Fear and More Fear in Central America: An Ebook Look at John McAfee”
Today, The Guardian relayed one of those stunning medical stories that causes me to clean off my glasses and take another look to make sure I’m reading it clearly. They report that an outbreak of norovirus in Britain this winter has struck more than 1.1 million people with vomiting and diarrhea.
That’s right: 1.1 million. In Britain alone.
Continue reading “The Norovirus: A Study in Puked Perfection”
Whew! Tomorrow, January 1, 2013, marks two weeks since I started writing here at National Geographic’s Phenomena. I’m in a holiday lull at the moment, but after New Year’s, I’ll rev back up to full speed. I’m looking forward to a delightful year in blogging in 2013, and hope you’ll join me for the ride.
Originally published December 31, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.
Anna writes, “I’m a geology student at UCSC and I got to thinking what tattoo would really encapsulate the major, regardless of what I do with it. Plate tectonics is the driving force behind all geologic processes; it’s crazy to me how young the science is. So I got a tattoo, a map of the world with plate boundaries and the direction of their motion, along with a 3D image of a cross section of a subduction zone.”
You can see the rest of the Science Tattoo Emporium here and in Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed.
Originally published December 29, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.
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