If we could get into one of those wonderful Wellsian time machines, all shining oak and glass, with polished brass handles and instruments, and ride it back to some time in the latter half of the nineteenth century, we would encounter a very different world from the one of today.  Especially for Americans, it is [...]

Until Galileo and the Renaissance, man was firmly at the center of his universe, as defined and illustrated by scientists and philosophers alike.  This belief was perhaps best shown in the geocentric model of the solar system, started by the Egyptian astronomer, Ptolemy, nearly two thousand years ago, to which many others contributed before it became [...]

Physics has been taking an increased interest in the origins of phenomena.  How did everything start?  Several recent books have delved into that mysterious moment. the Big Bang, when the universe is supposed to have emerged into being.  Emerged from what?  And what happened before that (if anything) to cause that event?
There is one thing [...]