What Asteroids Can Teach Us About Climate Change

Scientists Are Aware of the Perils of Near-Earth Objects and Rising Temperatures. Humanity Can’t Come Together to Deal With Them

On June 30, 1908, a sudden blast knocked down over 2,000 square kilometers of forest in a sparsely inhabited part of Siberia. Witnesses saw a fireball from hundreds of miles away. At least one Indigenous Evenki man, and possibly two more, perished, and several individuals suffered minor injuries.

No one could find a meteorite or a crater near the site of what is now known as the Tunguska explosion. The absence fueled rampant speculation about its cause, with everything from aliens to antimatter considered as possible culprits. But by now, most …

Will Hawai’i Succeed in Killing Me?

A Weather Forecaster on the Big Island Predicts More Disasters If the State Doesn’t Heed Scientific Warnings

Hawai‘i is a spectacular place—not just visually exciting, but also located above incredible geological forces and beneath amazing atmospheric conditions. As a meteorologist who reports on earth science news, I …

A male bullfinch with an orange chest and black head and wing tips in a cage.

Intellectual Snobbery Is for the Birds

How Birdkeepers and Bullfinch Sperm Taught an Ornithologist Something New About Evolution

Birdkeepers are almost universally scorned by anyone else interested in birds. Biologists and birdwatchers alike are generally opposed to the idea of birds being kept in captivity. But during a …

| Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

I Turn Science Into Art

My Textbook Illustrations Help Educate the Next Generation of Biologists, Doctors, and Physicists

I graduated from art school in a muddle. All I’d ever really wanted to do was draw, and I had done so on every sheet of paper that came within …

How Valley Fever Brings People Together

Scientific Research Is Famously Siloed, But a Collaborative Community Has Emerged Around This California Disease

For the last five years, I’ve researched Valley fever at a multidisciplinary lab at the University of California, Merced. This experience has convinced me that for my work to pay …

Could a Tattoo Cure What Ails You? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Could a Tattoo Cure What Ails You?

Medicine Is an Art. Art, Too, Can Be Medicine

Tattoos and medicine may seem an unlikely pairing, but medical tattoos are nothing new. Religious tattoos of ancient Egyptians honored the gods and, possibly, directed divine healing to ailing body …