The seventh season of Julia Child’s “The French Chef[1],” the first of the television series to air in color, revealed how color can change the experience of food. While Child had charmed audiences in black and white, seeing “Bouillabaisse à la Marseillaise” in color helped elevate the experience from merely entertaining to...
The Boeing Starliner has returned to Earth without its crew – a former astronaut details what that means for NASA, Boeing and the astronauts still up in space
Boeing’s crew transport space capsule, the Starliner[1], returned to Earth without its two-person crew[2] right after midnight Eastern time on Sept. 7, 2024. Its remotely piloted return marked the end of a fraught test flight to the International Space Station which left two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams, on the...
Tiny, compact galaxies are masters of disguise in the distant universe − searching for the secrets behind the Little Red Dots
Astronomers exploring the faraway universe with the James Webb Space Telescope[1], NASA’s most powerful telescope, have found a class of galaxies that challenges even the most skillful creatures in mimicry – like the mimic octopus[2]. This creature can impersonate other marine animals to avoid predators. Need to be a flatfish? No problem. A...
Space travel comes with risk − and SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission will push the envelope further than any private mission has before
Space is an unnatural environment for humans. We can’t survive unprotected in a pure vacuum[1] for more than two minutes. Getting to space involves being strapped to a barely contained chemical explosion[2].
Since 1961, fewer than 700 people[3] have been into space. Private space companies such as SpaceX[4] and Blue Origin[5] hope to boost...