Theme: Astronomy

When Earth was thought to lie at the centre of the universe, the planets were seen as wandering stars – Gods perhaps, or their distant abodes.Read more

It's August of 2011, do you know when your Apocalypse is?There are 1000s of people who think that something important—if not the end or the world, then something—will happen on December 21, 2012. Read more

One of the real challenges facing the interpretation of ancient astronomies—from non-academic '2012' prophecies to the most traditional scholarship on the Dresden Codex Venus Table—is that presented by ‘patterns in randomness.’Read more

The solar system does not consist of twelve planets and then everything else. That is simply a fundamentally incorrect description of it. And the next day in Prague, astronomers were going to stand up and encourage the world to think of the solar system incorrectly. As someone who spends much of my life trying to be not just a scientist but an educator, trying to explain the universe and show the excitement without resorting to science fiction or trivial simplification, the idea that astronomers would actively encourage people to have the wrong view of the solar system seemed almost criminal. The idea that I was going to, overnight, become one of the most famous astronomers in the world on account of this criminal activity made me a passive accomplice. I had to do something to stop it. Read more