Share this on WhatsApp The coronavirus that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and staggered the world’s economy is just about 88 nanometers in diameter—138 nm if you count its spikes. In this issue of Scientific American, we show what scientists have learned so far about the structure and function of the evil genius […]
Share this on WhatsApp Margaret Burbidge, an astronomer who made vital contributions to our understanding of what happens inside stars and who worked on instruments for the Hubble Space Telescope, has died at 100. The University of California, San Diego, where Burbidge had worked from 1962 to 1988, announced her death on Twitter Monday (April 6), noting that […]
Share this on WhatsApp Quantifying things is an overarching goal in science, but recent events have left me pondering just why that is. After all, we’ve long known that numbers can be precise but inaccurate. The textbook exemplar is Lord Kelvin, the 19th-century British physicist who insisted that unless you could quantify a thing, your […]