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 Design: more 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