Dr. Lev Horodyskyj: Science Education Gets a Virtual Makeover

by Emily Harari You’re driving and you pull up behind a car at a red light. The light switches to green, but the car sits unmoved. What do you do? Instinctively, you reach for the horn, and, after a quick blaring of sound, the car in front of you moves. You’ve just conducted a scientific experiment. You observed the car not moving, but didn’t know why, so you assumed the driver ahead of you wasn’t paying attention to the road. […]

September 6, 2020 Leave a comment

Dr. Afshin Khan: Crops on Mars

by Emily Harari Every 4th of July, many Americans turn their gaze to the night sky. From a pop of color and a quick clap like thunder, fireworks unveil themselves. In addition to gunpowder, a lesser known ingredient called perchlorates are responsible for the mesmerizing explosions. Perchlorates are salts containing an ion called perchlorate – a chlorine atom bonded to four oxygen atoms. These salts can serve as oxidants for fireworks and explosives, but also can be toxic to living […]

August 7, 2020 Leave a comment

“Science Nomad,” Dr. Daniel Angerhausen, Looks for Habitable Planets

By Emily Harari Dr. Daniel Angerhausen is an astrophysicist and astrobiologist at ETH Zürich. Ask him what the oldest question of humankind is and he’ll immediately jump to life on other planets: Are we alone, or are other planets outside our solar system similarly habitable? But Angerhausen doubles back: “That’s also a bit exaggerated. Maybe the oldest question is, ‘Can I eat this?’ But I really think [habitability] is one of the biggest scientific questions and also one that is […]

Photo of a network over the Earth in space

July 14, 2020 Leave a comment

Just an ‘Earth Thing’

by Emily Harari When I think of Earth, the first thing that comes to mind is life. When I was an undergraduate student studying biology, I saw our planet as an oasis in the desert of our galaxy, where extreme conditions made life seemingly impossible. As I graduated from university, however, I realized that life maybe isn’t just an ‘Earth thing.’ Astrobiology is a field of study that brings together the studies of life on Earth with the possibility for […]