One place I’ve always wanted to visit is Antarctica. It’s a continent seemingly designed for science geeks and natural-history buffs. Here’s a sampling of scientists now scattered across the bleak landscape: Cosmologists tweak the 10-meter South Pole Telescope , just completed last February; geologists...

Yesterday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a nice summary of efforts by the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee to detect gravitational waves. The article focuses on NEMO , the $1.8 million, 1,560 CPU, Beowulf-class computing cluster built and operated by the school’s gravitational-wave group. (Ah, I...

Best known to astronomical trivia buffs as the man who coined the term “black hole,” University of Texas physicist John A. Wheeler died this morning at the age of 96. Wheeler “was legendary for his way with words, coining such terms as wormholes, quantum foam, black holes, and the wave function of the...