Someone recently wrote to me about misstatements in the media. In particular, a TV reporter had referred to the sun as the "brightest star known." Of course this is absurd, but in fact the sun is the brightest star in our sky. This got me to thinking. How bright does the sun appear from the […]
Archive for April, 2007
They came as an invading horde of tiny eight-legged aliens, gliding silently across the sky on gossamer wings.
It’s not science fiction, but a fanciful scene from Charlotte’s Webb. And of course the aliens were really harmless baby spiders, heeding Nature’s call to spread themselves far and wide to assure the survival of spiderdom (or at […]
I love Isaac Newton’s saying that if he had been able to see further than others, it was only because he had stood on the shoulders of giants. Now, the exact intent of this utterance has been under debate, but there is no doubt that Newton could see far, but just how far?
At night we […]