If you’re wondering what dark matter is, you’re not alone. Astronomers don’t know. But they’ve determined that this invisible material must be far more abundant than the stars and nebulas that they can see. They’ve surmised as much from observing the …
As a kid in the 1970s, I watched the Apollo moon missions on TV, drawn like a curious moth to the cathode-ray tube’s glow. The English band Pink Floyd blared through the speakers of my mom’s Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, beckoning us to the dark side of…
Isolation dictates where we go to see into the far reaches of the universe. The Atacama Desert of Chile, the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the vast expanse of the Australian Outback—these are where astronomers and engineers have built the great obser…