Science, History, and Fiction in Everyday Life
Latest articles published on Serious Wonder, all of them devoted to space missions, present or future. UNDER THE KRAKEN SEA – A NASA SUBMARINE ON TITAN – February, 13 2015 DAWN MISSION UPDATE: CLOSING IN ON CERES – January, 24…
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Birth is certainly one of the most emotionally charged phenomena in nature, and a star makes no exception. For much as humans tend to think about space objects as eternal, they are not – they have a start and an…
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Yes, “on” it is the correct preposition. It’s not the continent I’m talking about; it is the Jupiter’s moon with the same name. Why so? Because NASA just got extra-money for its 2016 budget (of $18.5 billion dollars, i.e. half…
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Not happy with having discovered many of the secrets of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko thanks to the Rosetta mission and its Philae probe, ESA-Rosetta team scientists have also engaged in a naming exercise, and identified 19 regions on the surface of the comet…
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…which is maybe not a myth after all. When I have written some time ago about Nemesis, or the Death Star, in fiction and in conspiracy theories, I have briefly mentioned Planet X. Historically, this name has been given to two…
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That things don’t last forever, we all know it. After all, we witness cycles of life and death every day. But there are things we are used to think as eternal – like stars and galaxies – even though we’re…
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Galaxies are one of the most incredible objects in the universe, and they are in continuous evolution. Thanks to the Virgo Consortium for Cosmological Supercomputer Simulations, we have now access to the most advanced computer simulation (to date) of the universe, that contains…
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That xkcd is an amazing website, you already know (and if you don’t, go and have a look at it now! You won’t regret it). But you often find out that some of its graphics are conceptually powerful – like this…
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During this Christmas break (still ongoing) I was thinking about the most amazing videos I have watched in 2014, and there are many that qualify in this sense. This year has been remarkable under many aspects, for a start. Also, thanks to this blog, I…
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If there’s a stellar object that’s both scaring and fascinating at the same time is the black hole. Scientists are still debating about what its nature truly is, and recent findings only add to its mystery. An accepted definition for it…
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