Posts Categorized: Guest Posts

An excerpt from Rise of the Rocket Girls, by Nathalia Holt
Fascinating, beautifully written, enlightening history… I love this book.

… It was 1968, and the women were gearing up for another go at Mars. Mariner 6 and 7 would be the latest craft to fly by the Red Planet. The computers eagerly plotted the spacecraft’s trajectories and programmed the instruments that would probe the planet from space in search of extraterrestrial life. Helen was doing contingency planning, just in case something went wrong…

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An Excerpt From The Selfish Gene, By Richard Dawkins (40th Anniversary)
40 years later, this is still one of the best descriptions of evolution and natural selection of all time. Happy Birthday to “The Selfish Gene”! If you haven’t read it yet, you owe it to yourself to read it now:

…Chemists have tried to imitate the chemical conditions of the young earth. They have put these simple substances in a flask and supplied a source of energy such as ultraviolet light or electric sparks – artificial simulation of primordial lightning. After a few weeks of this, something interesting is usually found inside the flask… Continue Reading

An excerpt from The Universe Within
by Neil Shubin

All the galaxies in the cosmos, like every creature on the planet, and every atom, molecule, and body on Earth are deeply connected. That connection begins at a single point 13.7 billion years ago…

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An excerpt from Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5 Billion-Year
History of the Human Body
by Neil Shubin

… No matter how different the species look as adults, as tiny embryos they all go through the same stages of development. To fully appreciate the importance of this, we need to look again at our first three weeks after conception… 

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