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Astrophysicist Janna Levin reads Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Hymn to Time” – 35 seconds of sublime truth and beauty.

Background, context, and poem text here.

Alan Lightman science philosophy science and technology spirituality religion physics

We are idealists and we are realists. We are dreamers and we are builders. We are experiencers and we are experimenters. We long for certainties, yet we ourselves are full of the ambiguities of the Mona Lisa and the I Ching. We ourselves are a part of the yin-yang of the world.

Physicist and writer Alan Lightman on our longing for absolutes in a relative world and what gives lasting meaning to our temporal lives — superb read, a rare miracle of the meeting point of the lucid and the luminous.

Werner Heisenberg physics Nobel laureates love letters love quotes thought and opinion science and technology culture and society science

Werner Heisenberg Falls in Love — the love letters of the Nobel-winning pioneer of quantum mechanics and originator of the uncertainty principle.

Niels Bohr physics science religion science and technology thought and opinion theology culture and society

Nobel-winning physicist Niels Bohr on subjective vs. objective reality and the uses of religion in a secular world.

science Oliver Sacks David George Haskell Alan Burdick time Marcus du Sautoy Janna Levin physics astrophysics lit Liza Mundy women's history women in STEM women in science Clifford Johnson comics cosmology trees astronomy cryptography consciousness

7 great science books of 2017

Carl Jung Wolfgang Pauli physics science and technology science diagrams

Atom, Archetype, and the Invention of Synchronicity – how iconic psychiatrist Carl Jung and Nobel-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli bridged mind and matter.

physics Steven Weinberg science and technology science thought and opinion culture and society interviews

Nobel-winning physicist Steven Weinberg on simplicity and complexity, science and religion, and the unity of the universe.

Vera Rubin Debbie Millman quotes women in science science and technology science women in STEM dark matter space astrophysics physics astronomy cosmology space art

So much love and respect poured into this remembrance of trailblazing astrophysicist Vera Rubin, who confirmed the existence of dark matter and paved the way for modern women in science.

Original art by Debbie Millman available as a print, with all proceeds benefiting the Association for Women in Science.

Read the remembrance here.

David Bohm science and technology science thought and opinion culture and society physics

If we are to live in harmony with ourselves and with nature, we need to be able to communicate freely in a creative movement in which no one permanently holds to or otherwise defends his own ideas.

Legendary physicist David Bohm on the paradox of communication, the crucial difference between discussion and dialogue, and what is keeping us from listening to one another – timely wisdom from decades ago.

Lise Meitner women in sciece science history women's history science and technology culture and society physics Nobel Prize

How pioneering physicist Lise Meitner, born on this day in 1878, was denied the Nobel Prize for the groundbreaking discovery she herself made but paved the way for women in science nonetheless.

black holes science and technology astrophysics physics cosmology science

Wonderful Quanta Magazine piece on how black holes tell the story of the stars. Complement with the story of the century-long quest to hear black holes, which stands as one of the most significant scientific discoveries in our lifetime, and the story of how the term “black hole” was born.

John Archibald Wheeler physics thought and opinion science and technology science cosmology

In 1989, the pioneering theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler (who popularized the term black hole) came up with a concept he called It from Bit – a fascinating, mind-bending theory of information, the nature of reality, and how we shape the universe. Read it here.

Sean Carroll science and technology science physics time TED Radio Hour

To a physicist, time is a label on the universe.

Terrific episode of NPR’s TED Radio Hour about our experience of time, starring physicist Sean Carroll, who has written beautifully about science and the human search for meaning.

Also see the psychology of time and the science of why we experience it as linear.

Albert Einstein graphic novels comics science and technology science Corinne Maier Anne Simon art and design physics illustration

Albert Einstein’s brilliant and unusual life, in a graphic novel.

Stephen Hawking science and technology science physics astrophysics culture and society

If the rules break down in black holes, they may be lost in other places as well… If foundational information disappears into a gaping maw, the notion of a “past” itself may be in jeopardy — we couldn’t even be sure of our own histories. Our memories could be illusions. “It’s the past that tells us who we are. Without it we lose our identity,” [Dr. Hawking] said.

A fascinating look at Stephen Hawking’s new theory suggesting that it might be possible to escape from a black hole, which challenges some of the most fundamental tenets of modern physics.

Complement with the indispensable Black Hole Blues – an illuminating chronicle of the search for gravitational waves in the century since Einstein’s groundbreaking theory of relativity and how it changed our understanding of the universe.