Four hundred years ago, Galileo turned his telescope toward Saturn for the first time, but instead of rings, he saw something quite different. An interview with Ann Finkbeiner, author of A Grand and Bold Thing: An Extraordinary New Map of the Universe Ushering In A New Era of Discovery (and more). Cosmology enters a golden age: Physicists and astronomers are on the verge of cracking some of science's most enduring questions. Andy Lloyd's startling hypothesis, if proved true, could turn Planet X from a conspiracy-tinged myth into a scientific reality. What's the "anti-universe" and can scientists find it? From Scientific American, who should get credit for the Higgs particle? A storm is brewing round the scientists in line to win the Nobel prize for predicting the elusive particle. The rage of reason: World-changing theories and big breakthroughs are what every scientist yearns for — but the pressure to get results and glory means that feuds come thick and fast. Is science becoming authoritarian? Some very telling results of a Lexis/Nexus search. Wishful thinking does not make the Earth flat, nor will climate change just go away — and the people who think it might are risking the legitimacy of scientific endeavour. From Intelligent Life, plenty of today’s scientific theories will one day be discredited — so should we be sceptical of science itself? How many realise that the scientific age is but a brief, transitory phase in the evolution and development of humankind? One day it will all come to an end.
