Author: Frederick Stankus

What would our solar system look like if an alien were to spot it from another planet, orbiting a distant star? How improbable would it appear? For the first time in human history, thanks to advances in exoplanet hunting, we can now answer that question. We can even put numbers on it. If that alien […]

Mother Nature can be a handful when she wants to be,” says John Conkling, the former technical director of the American Pyrotechnics Association and a professor emeritus of chemistry at Washington College. Except he used a stronger, more colorful word than “handful.” When it comes to fireworks, “she just doesn’t want to give you that […]

We tend to be cooperative—unless we think too much.

On a recent Sunday, at my local Italian market, I considered the octopus. To eat the tentacle would be, in a way, like eating a brain—the eight arms of an octopus contain two-thirds of its half billion neurons. Delicious for some, yes—but for others, a jumping off point for the philosophical question of other minds. […]

This time the test is Earth’s own ecological future.

Robert Paine showed us the surprising importance of predators.

What science says about my outer beauty.

The medicalization of nature turns a relationship into a dose.

The sheer stress of an environment contributes to obesity and diabetes.

The sheer stress of an environment contributes to obesity and diabetes.