Guest Thinkers — August 16, 2010

At Ars Technica, More Focus on the AAAS Religion Panel

The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

At the popular site Ars Technica, science editor John Timmer pens a detailed summary of the “Communicating Science in a Religious America” panel held at last month’s AAAS meetings. The article is also picked up by Slashdot.

The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

Man in a dark shirt smiling against a purple background with black scribbles and a white rectangle, reminiscent of "The Year of Living Biblically," embracing the chaos with serene humor.

Books

What happens when you follow the Bible literally for a whole year?

A.J. Jacobs looks back at what he learned about religion, himself, and modern American culture during “The Year of Living Biblically.”

A vintage-style illustration of a celestial scene, echoing science fiction by scientists, features a textured black planet and a whimsical moon with an eye, all enclosed in a pale green border against a starry background.

Books

5 classic science fiction novels written by scientists

What happens when scientists “write what they know”? Some amazing science fiction stories.

Black-and-white photo showing a disc-shaped object with a shadowed underside, floating in a blank sky—an iconic image from the UFO craze.

Books

Science fiction, Project Blue Book, and the beginnings of the UFO craze

In this preview from “The Saucerian,” author Gabriel Mckee explains how the combination of fantastical stories and obscure bureaucracy launched the “space age of the imagination.”

Illustration of a comet from an old manuscript on the left, and a black and white image of a comet in space on the right.

The Past

Asteroid anxiety: Astronomy’s 300-year quest to predict cosmic collisions

Fears of celestial collisions — and calculations of their likelihood — go back to the very origins of modern science itself.

A person with light hair is turned sideways, holding and reading a partially redacted book filled with pseudonyms, all set against a black grid background.

High Culture

5 famous authors who used pseudonyms (and why they did it)

From acclaimed novels to heretical treatises, sometimes a writer just doesn’t want to put their name on the cover.

Up Next

Guest Thinkers

At the National Academies, Research on Framing Evolution

In the latest issue of the journal CBE Life Sciences, National Academies senior staffers Jay Labov and Barbara Kline Pope describe the audience research that informed the writing, design, and […]