It is tempting to say that any well-educated person should know what it takes to be scientifically literate. But what does scientific literacy really involve? Given that scientific literacy is a key goal of most science education standards and frameworks, considerable ink has been dedicated to utilizing the term in pedagogical papers.
Africa’s astronomical debut has come at an opportune time, as a multitude of facilities and projects have taken root across the continent in the service of astronomical questing.
If we ever make contact with an alien civilization, how will we understand what they’re saying? That’s the question that preoccupies John Elliott of...
By now, you have probably read or heard that our polluting ways have reached a critical point, where Earth is rapidly approaching total failure as a planet. Perhaps you have wondered how we humans could have managed to do so much damage in so little time.
Permanent settlements in space will require forms of localized government that are likely to differ from contemporary models of political order. This article thus asks a provocative question associated with the empirical record of human colonization and settlement in prior eras: What sort of authoritarian governance is most likely to form in human space settlements during the medium term?
I have no doubt that we will become an interplanetary species,
within two decades and that we will likely find the existence of life, or past life, on another
planetary body, within the next decade.
Each year, the American Astronomical Society (AAS) hosts two big meetings in January and June that span all of astronomy and its subfields of cosmology, helioastronomy, and planetary science. The COVID-19 pandemic took its toll, beginning in June 2020, when the meeting format pivoted to online presentations. The January 2022 meeting was canceled outright, but by June 2022, the society pivoted again, offering a hybrid mix of in-person and online formats. These two meetings underscored the unquenchable thirst for astronomical questing among our veteran and rising scientists. Here are a few highlights from these meetings.
Africa’s astronomical debut has come at an opportune time, as a multitude of facilities and projects have taken root across the continent in the service of astronomical questing.
