Topic: Pamela Gay
Leading Science Via Meritocracy and Consensus

Leading Science Via Meritocracy and Consensus

An American flag hung upside down from a cliff by National Parks employees, signifying distress. Credit: Tracy Barbutes / San Francisco Chronical One of the imperfectly realized goals of science is to reward people fairly for their excellence and defining our future through models of shared governance as we prioritize limited resources.  Research shows that reality favors the ideas of people at the best schools who are white and male. It is not enough to be the best, you also have to overcome bias and have a certain amount of luck  - There are issues…but we are trying to be self...

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iSpace Has a Rubric for Mission 2 Success

iSpace Has a Rubric for Mission 2 Success

Over the past year, we've seen a variety of different commercial missions that do things I wouldn't necessarily consider successful. We've seen lunar landers unintentionally practice gymnastics by standing on their heads and flipping over sideways. We've seen...

Meteorite Strikes Walkway on Prince Edward Island

Meteorite Strikes Walkway on Prince Edward Island

The scattering of video cameras all over the world, as people mount them on dashboards and doorbells, is allowing us to see rare events. When it comes to meteorite collecting, the amazing security cameras and other nighttime images have made it significantly easier...

Protecting Historic Sites on Earth, Moon, and Mars

Protecting Historic Sites on Earth, Moon, and Mars

Dominion Observatory in Ottawa Our planet is dotted with old observatories and astronomical research centers that are no longer capable of doing science. Either their equipment is too small, their skies too bright, or both. Both is always an option. I've been lucky...

Don Pettit Proves Stars Can Be Tracked From ISS

Don Pettit Proves Stars Can Be Tracked From ISS

Photo taken by Astronaut Don Pettit from ISS: Milky Way with Zodiacal light and Starlink satellites streaking by. Astronaut Don Pettit is, among many other things, an amateur astronomer. One of the most delightful moments of my life with getting to hear him talk to...

Crew 10 Delayed Until March 2025

Crew 10 Delayed Until March 2025

Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT) astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams in T-38 pre-flight activities at Ellington Field. Photo Date: August 16, 2022. Location: Ellington Field, Hangar 276/Flight Line. Photographer: Robert Markowitz In some late breaking news, NASA...

Ryugu Sample Supports Invading Life

Ryugu Sample Supports Invading Life

Ryugu samples showing signs of bacteria contamination. Trying to understand the evolution of planets and life is really a driving motivation for a lot of science and science fiction. Landing squarely in the “I think I read a horror story about this,” scientists found...

Io Doesn’t Actually Have a Gooey Center

Io Doesn’t Actually Have a Gooey Center

Collapsed volcanoes form large, dark spots on Io's surface, NASA/JPL/USGS One of our greatest frustrations as a science, is we astronomical and planetary scientists can’t do the same kind of experiments that other kinds of scientists get to do. We look at things from...

Dark Comet Numbers on the Rise

Dark Comet Numbers on the Rise

Oumuamua illustration by Stuart Rankin Humans like to label things. In general, this works out for us. If you go to a furniture store and ask for a sofa, they will show you things multiple people can sit on that are clearly sofas. Ask for a chair, and they will show...

The Monkeys Can’t Write Hamlet

The Monkeys Can’t Write Hamlet

By New York Zoological Society — Image derived from: Chimpanzee seated at a typewriter; Public Domain. I have bad news for one of statistics favorite sayings. As the story goes, given enough time and enough monkey’s randomly pressing keys on a keyboard, the complete...