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Paul Preuss

In the 1980s I freelanced as a science writer for magazines like
Discover, Science 80-86, and Human Behavior. A preview of Carl
Sagan’s Cosmos for Walter Annenberg’s short-lived Panorama led to
work with Carl, Ann Druyan, and Gentry Lee on a proposed TV series,
to be called Nucleus.

In the ’90s I started a day job at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
just in time for the discovery that duct tape can do almost anything except seal ducts. At the other extreme, I was on hand for the astonishing revelation of dark energy and wrote about it until (and after) Saul Perlmutter won the Nobel Prize.

After leaving the Lab in the 2010s I again worked freelance, mostly for
UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering, covering a scientific realm with
direct impact on people’s lives.

Here’s a handful of favorite stories from those years:

Roman Seawater Concrete: the properties of ancient Roman concrete
that made port facilities that are still solid today
.

In the Domain of Designmore and more, “Everyone designs
who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations
into preferred ones.”

Atom by Atom, Bond by Bond: highest-resolution images of a
molecule breaking and reforming chemical bonds.

A Dent in the Iron Hypothesis: plankton blooms do not send
atmospheric carbon to the deep ocean.

Closest Type Ia Supernova Solves a Cosmic Mystery: the surprising
make-up of an ordinary Type Ia. 

What Keeps the Earth Cooking: measuring the radioactive sources
of Earth’s heat flow.

For those who want to know more about dark energy, here’s a
history of its discovery:

Dark Energy’s Tenth Anniversary, Part I, announcing the
accelerating universe.

Dark Energy’s Tenth Anniversary, Part II, success breeds competition.

Dark Energy’s Tenth Anniversary, Part III, the aftermath:
confirmation and exploration. 

And finally, here are a few short essays on scientific topics mentioned elsewhere on this website:

Humans, Robots, and the Ultimate Turing Test 

The Nonexistent Paradoxes of Time Travel 

A Blast from the Past 

Tangled Up in Quanta