The Success of Spaceguard

For years, many scientists warned of the dangers that asteroids pose to life on Earth, but for many years they weren’t listened to. Even after it was first proposed, in 1980, that the dinosaurs were killed off by a huge asteroid striking the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico,1 there was, in the words of leading astronomer Clark R. Chapman, a “giggle factor” associated with the risk from asteroids.2 This all changed in 1994 when comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 thudded into the side of Jupiter with th...

 Hot Red Chili Consumption Lowers Mortality

The evidence base for the health effects of spice consumption is insufficient, with only one large population-based study and no reports from Europe or North America. Our objective was to analyze the association between consumption of hot red chili peppers and mortality, using a population-based prospective cohort from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (NHANES) III, a representative sample of US noninstitutionalized adults, in which participants were surveyed from 1988 to...

 The Birth of the Atomic Age

The Atomic Age began at exactly 5.30 Mountain War Time on the morning of July 15, 1945, on a stretch of semi-desert land about 50 airline miles from Alamogordo, New Mexico. And just at that instance there rose from the bowels of the earth a light not of this world, the light of many suns in one. ... At first it was a giant column that soon took the shape of a supramundane mushroom.