David Almandsmith

Greetings, dear reader. I trust you will find some delectable items in this week’s science smorgasbord. SPACE Learned geophysicists years ago concluded that Mars has a hot liquid inner core, unlike Earth with its hot solid inner core. They calculated that Mars’ gravitational pressure is insufficient to make molten iron solid, as is the case with our home planet. … Read more

Welcome again, I get such good feedback from so many of you that i often think of you as colleagues. Lately i’ve been living less than a hundred meters from a heavily-traveled 6-lane, 55 mph thoroughfare. (Quick question: ¿Of the world’s 190+ nations, how many officially use “miles” instead of kilometers for road signs? Answer … Read more

Welcome dear science-aware reader, I’ve been slogging through The Climate Book created through the efforts of Greta Thunberg. It is an astounding collection of 84 short ‘essays’ by scientists, economists, visionaries, philosophers, and respected authors. The book has 5 sections: – How Climate Works– How Our Planet is Changing– How It Affects Us– What We’ve Done About … Read more

Welcome dear science-appreciative reader, When Avian Influenza H5N1 is detected in one chicken on an egg farm, it and all of the tens of thousands of other chickens there are destroyed. Over 50 million birds in the U.S. were destroyed this way last year. ¿Why not vaccinate chickens? It isn’t expensive. It’s because eggs and chickens sold … Read more

Thank you, dear reader, for joining us again and for your kind comments. Christmas Island Rat, Wooly Mammoth, Passenger Pigeon, Thylacine (a marsupial: carries newborns in a pouch). These animals are extinct but efforts are currently underway to “bring them back.” In each case, researchers are compiling the complete genomes of the extinct animals using … Read more

Happy New Year. Thank you for joining me today. As technology promises better and longer lives, the ‘situation on the ground’ is dismal for much of the world’s 8 billion people – but over the long arc of history, “it’s getting better.” As we and our neighbors and our children tune into how alike we … Read more

Dear reader, so glad you’re reading this. Let me start by laying out some work we need to do. I love maps of all kinds. The map above is based on Pew Research data of the percentage of people who agreed that “certain people can cast curses or spells that cause bad things to happen … Read more

Lunar Eclipse – Election – Asteroid Hello, my fellow Earthlings. So glad you are reading this. Tuesday at 0-dark-30 the entire moon will be fully covered by Earth’s shadow. (2:17 a.m. Pacific) It will begin emerging from the shadow at 3:42 a.m. Andrew Fraknoi has provided an informational page on the event Tuesday at 7 a.m. … Read more

Hello again, dear science fan, No one – arguably – knows more about ghost hunting than Kenny Biddle. At this year’s SkeptiCal, he shared stories from his ghost-hunting forays, including the techniques and the electronic instrumentation he used. Some years ago, however, Biddle did a turn-around, climbed out of the ghost-hunting rabbit hole, and became a … Read more

Dear science aware reader,  Last Monday, September 26, the 600 kg DART spacecraft struck the 4.8 billion kg asteroid Dimorphos. An Italian CubeSat detached from DART 15 days earlier to take pictures of the collision with cameras Leia and Luke. The collision ‘should’ slow the asteroid’s speed by 2 cm/sec from its initial (stellar) velocity of … Read more