At the top of the SLS will be the Orion, the capsule designed to take astronauts—men and, yes, now women—as far as Mars (come the 2030s).
science
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Hunt for the Perfect Sugar
The quest for a zero-calorie sweetener is getting more urgent — and harder than ever. Will the science and economics of Big Food finally get us to the fake-sugar grail?
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes, Science & Nature
Learning About Memory from a Woman Who Lost Hers
Lonni Sue Johnson was a successful illustrator, when the herpes simplex virus attacked her brain; she lost almost her entire lifetime of knowledge, along with the ability to form new memories. Michael Lemonick describes how she’s invaluable to neuroscientists working to understand how we make and store memories.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Living In the Now
Lonni Sue can paint, but not name a painting; learn new music without knowing a tune. Scientific American opinion editor Michael Lemonick explore what she’s is teaching us about memory.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes, Unapologetic Women
I’ll See Your Troll and Raise You One Notable Woman Scientist
At Backchannel, Andrew McMillen writes on how one young Wikipedia admin fights back at trolls by raising the profile of notable women in science, one new Wikipedia page at a time.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Science vs. the Jellyfish! (Hint: the Jellyfish Are Winning)
Jellyfish: we can’t predict where and when they’ll appear, we can’t anticipate where they’ll go, and they can shut down an aircraft carrier. Tamar Stelling looks at these amazingly resilient sacks of goo.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Jellyfish Are Coming: Brace Yourself for Goo-mageddon
Endless streams of jellyfish are taking a bite out of fish stocks, clogging water pipes, and scuppering seaside vacations. What to do: destroy them, control them, or just leave them be?
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Biological Clocks and Biological Gender: Trans Women and the Dream of Pregnancy
Belle Boggs writes in Guernica, exploring what the possibility of uterine transplants — no matter how remote or unaccessible the science is — means for trans women.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Practical Cartography: I Am Mapped, Therefore I Am
Lois Parshley’s wide-ranging, fascinating story on mapping the unmapped — from black holes, to the bottom of the sea, to the populations of the Congo and Haiti — looks at not just the science of map-making, but the morality.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Mother Science
Uterine transplants are frontier science, but they offer hope of possibility for trans women and others seeking parenthood.