Whatever you choose to measure, be it global population, the damming of rivers, increases in communication or transport technology, or the relentless spread of McDonald’s restaurants, the pattern is s...
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935), a reclusive, near-deaf, self-taught rural schoolteacher who, working alone and having almost no contact with the wider scientific community, invented ingenious engi...
In 1929, as a young man, British biologist J. D. Bernal wrote a book entitled The World, The Flesh and the Devil that Arthur C. Clarke called, the most brilliant attempt at scientific prediction ever...
Species. In this way, we’ve changed the geometry of the planet. Before we came along, the world was discontinuous. Oceans, deserts, and mountain ranges formed impenetrable barriers, breaking Earth int...
Wonderful, because life gained the ability to harvest sunlight for energy. What a fantastic breakthrough! Earth’s biosphere learned to plug into the best power source the universe has to offer, tappin...
When a reporter asked Gandhi what he thought of Western civilization, he replied, I think it would be a wonderful idea. I would say the same about human intelligence. If we are not intelligent, then w...
Society. The orbital technology enabling this observation is itself one of the strange and striking aspects of the transition now gripping Earth. If up to now the defining characteristic of Earth has...