SELECTED
Articles
Essay on Richard Garwin (whom I interviewed repeatedly and checked in with the rest of his life, because he knew so much and told such good stories. I also wrote his Nature obituary and his profile, not to mention a review of a movie about him.
Mysterious Bright Flashes in the Sky Baffle Astronomers (new telescopes, astonishing ones, are streaming the flashes of light that come from everything physics doesn’t forbid)
Women Are Creating a New Culture for Astronomy (compared to the previous generations of women astronomers, this latest one is pretty feisty, like, don’t mess with them or with their friends either)
Orbital Aggression (satellites are hard to defend and easy to shoot down, so maybe we should work harder on treaties)
The Great Quake and the Great Drowning (people have lived in the Pacific Northwest for 10,000 years, so how did they handle earthquakes?)
Inside the Breakthrough Starshot Mission to Alpha Centauri (Starshot died from sheer improbability in 2025 but until then, it was engineering imagination at its finest)
The Scientist Who Reads Lost History in the Mud (profile of paleoecologist Grace Brush who drilled holes in the Chesapeake Bay mud and figured out what the land had done to the water)
SELECTED FROM
The Last Word on Nothing
Blown-Down Trees on the Dark Side
Storia > Story, History, Story
Farm Hall: The Fall into Failure
What I’m Not Going to Do > The Finkbeiner Test > Questions about the FT > Further Thoughts on FT > CJR on FT > Nearly Final Thoughts on FT
The Theorist, the Tundra, and the Forbidden Crystal
Uncle Bundy and the Ball Bearing