Selected Writings
-
Clear Skies, with a Chance of Black Holes
The Event Horizon Telescope’s historic quest to image the “shadow” of a supermassive black hole is off to an auspicious start
Scientific American, April 11, 2017
-
Stephen Hawking’s New Black-Hole Paper, Translated: An Interview with Co-Author Andrew Strominger
The Harvard physicist explains the collaboration’s long-awaited research on the black-hole information paradox
Scientific American, January 8, 2016
-
Astronomers Will Try to Take the First Picture of a Black Hole Next Year
If we survive the election, naturally
Scientific American, November 3, 2016
-
Why Colliding Galaxies Never Go out of Style
The first theory proposed to explain the universe’s strangest galaxies has had impressive staying power
Scientific American, October 15, 2015
-
Finding “Fringes”: New Event Horizon Telescope Detections Start Trickling In
New observations with the South Pole Telescope prove that the station will soon be able to join a worldwide network of observatories in a bid to image the event horizon of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
Scientific American, May 22, 2015
-
Quasars, Black Holes and the Origins of Intercontinental Radio Astronomy
Not long ago I came across a piece in the Scientific American archives from the earliest days of very-long baseline radio interferometry, the technique employed by the Event Horizon Telescope.
Scientific American, December 9, 2014
-
How To Build An Earth-Size Telescope
Looking into the galactic center is hard. So much dust and gas lies between us and the center of the Milky Way that very little of the visible light emitted there makes it to us.
Scientific American, April 11, 2014
-
Climate Chatter on the Island of Nobels
A heat wave, a German resort town, a gang of Nobel laureates, and a declaration on climate change
Scientific American, July 13, 2015
-
Machine Learning
Will artificial intelligence and big data take teachers out of the lecturing business?
Scientific American, August 2013
-
Signals From the Void
A band of astronomers have set out to create a planet-sized virtual radio telescope and take a picture of the black hole at the center of the galaxy.
Popular Science, August 2012
-
Did Global Warming Destroy My Hometown?
In May, 2011, a tornado obliterated my hometown of Joplin, Missouri. Was climate change to blame? Inside the complex, ambiguous science of extreme weather and global warming.
Popular Science, February 2012
-
Electric Avenue
The gradual electrification of the American automotive fleet is essential.
The New York Times Op-Ed Page, May 9, 2011
-
Critical Matter
In the field with the scientists and entrepreneurs who are scrambling to secure access to the minerals that will underlie a clean-energy economy.
Popular Science, June 2011