They were talking about black holes recently at the 189th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Toronto. New evidence of their existence was presented, along with evidence of black holes at the centers of three typical galaxies. This may prompt you to ask the question, “So what’s a black hole, and why should I …
Category: Blog
The Shroud of Turin
In medieval times, Holy Relics did boffo box-office. Saints’ finger bones–even entire saints–and pieces of the One True Cross drew the kinds of crowds most CFL teams would envy. Eventually, however, people noticed there were enough pieces of the One True Cross floating around to build a house, and holy relics fell into disrepute–all …
SETI @ Home
Alas for the good old days, when we thought the Earth was the center of the universe. Today we know our sun is only a very average star in a very average galaxy, in a universe where there are 50 billion galaxies, containing half a trillion stars each, around which, based on recent observations, planets …
Life on other planets
On the television program The X-Files, FBI agent Fox Mulder is always searching for proof of extraterrestrials, mostly by exploring old warehouses with his trusty flashlight and cell phone. But as an article by Ron Cowen in the November 1 issue of Science News points out, the real search for non-terrestrial life is taking place in university and …
Avalanches
Every year, on average, avalanches kill 10 people in Canada. In the past few days, two more people were added to this year’s tragic toll as Michel Trudeau, son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and Susanna Donald, a University of Calgary student from Regina, became the latest victims of these deadly snowslides, also known …
Stem cells
Imagine being able to grow any kind of human tissue in the laboratory and using it to replace the damaged cells of someone suffering from diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s or muscular dystrophy. Within a decade or two that science fictional dream could be reality, thanks to a breakthrough last week that scientists have …
John Glenn’s return to space
At 9:47 a.m. on February 20, 1962, John Glenn, 41, a U.S. Marine test pilot, strapped into the tiny Mercury space capsule known as Friendship 7, hurtled into space atop an Atlas rocket. In the ensuing four hours and 56 minutes he circled the Earth three times, then splashed down in the Atlantic ocean, 880 …
Canadian Nobel laureates
This is the time of year when the Nobel Prizes for science are awarded, and while there haven’t been any Canadian winners this year, for a small country, Canada has been well represented in the awards in the past few years–and can lay claim to one of the most important discoveries in medicine earlier this …
Transplants
A few years ago in Weyburn I had a role in a play called “Duet for Two Hands.” It was a grim little gothic tale of a drunken Scottish surgeon (that would be me) who had sewed the hands of a convicted murderer onto the wrists of a concert pianist who had lost his own …
Autumn
Wednesday marks the beginning of autumn, and the official beginning of that time of year when the air turns nippy, you have to scrape frost off your car in the morning, the leaves change color and drop from the trees, and the moon seems bigger and brighter than usual. Wednesday is considered the beginning of …
Digging for the Spanish Flu
In late 1917 or 1918, a new strain of influenza appeared in what is now Ft. Riley, Kansas. There’s nothing unusual about that: new strains of influenza appear all the time. At first, this one seemed no worse than any other. But something changed. As this flu spread to the east, it became seven …
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