Over the coming week 2016's slate of Nobel Laureates will be announced. These are the Academy Awards of science; it is not the only prize scientists can win but only the Nobel is simply "the Prize".
Elon Musk knows how to make a splash, and today he outlined his plan to turn humanity into a "multiplanetary species". Musk painted a picture of a future where travel to Mars was downright cheap, with tickets costing as little as $200,000, the median price of an American home. So is this possible? I have no idea, but it makes for a great Fermi question, a problem so fuzzy and incomplete that educated guesswork is the only way forward.
Last Friday, work kept me late at the office. It was a clear and cloudless night and the stars were out as I biked home in the dusk. And as my pedals turned, the night sky wheeled more slowly above me.
This week, the University of Auckland (where I work) announced it is joining the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope collaboration. So what is the LSST, what will it do, and why are we so excited about it?
Just as earthquakes are the release of energy stored in subterranean faults, these gravitational waves were set in motion when two black holes – faults in space itself – became a single, stable object. Call it a spacequake.