Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
The plot of the 2004 movie, The Day After Tomorrow, is that the Atlantic Ocean Circulation which carries warm water North suddenly stops and plunges the entire Northern Hemisphere into an Ice Age almost overnight… er yes, well it’s just a movie. What is actually going on with the Atlantic circulation is a concern, and … Read more
There are things we simply do not understand about the sun. The surface is 5,778 K, and yet the chromosphere, transition region, and corona are much hotter. Why? There are some ideas, but nobody knows. In order to answer such questions we need to go and take a closer look and that is what the Parker Solar … Read more
As we build better tools to see and observe how things really are our understanding of the universe grows. Multimessenger astronomy now has a new tool within its array of options. What is Multimessenger Astronomy? There are four different ways of detecting things within the universe. These are electromagnetic radiation, gravitational waves, neutrinos, and cosmic rays. The concept … Read more
About 14,500 years ago as we began to move out of a cold glacial period and back into a warmer interglacial something mysterious happened. That warming suddenly stopped and we shifted back into a cold glacial climate in the northern half of the planet. In about 11,500 this pause ended and things very abruptly shifted … Read more
The Marshmallow Test is all about delayed gratification and the potential impact that can have on our lives. It dates back to the late 1960s when psychologist Walter Mischel conducted a series of tests on very young children. It works like this. The child is presented with a marshmallow on a plate and told something like … Read more
New Caledonian crows are smart, very very smart. Last January the BBC highlighted a study that illustrated their tool making ability. They were shaping hooks out of plant material that they then used to fish for insets. These were not simply random twigs, but consisted of hooks that were far more efficient. These crows are … Read more