In November 1949, Chien-Shiung Wu and her graduate student, Irving Shaknov, descended to a laboratory below Columbia University's Pupin Hall. They needed antimatter for a new experiment, so they made their own, using a machine called a cyclotron. Their evidence suggested that pairs of photons from particle collisions
Marie Tharp spent the fall of 1952 hunched over a drafting table, surrounded by charts, graphs, and jars of India ink. Nearby, spread across several additional tables, lay her project—the largest and most detailed map ever produced of a part of the world no one had ever seen. For
At the American Physical Society’s annual March meeting in Las Vegas, Ranga Dias, a physicist at the University of Rochester, announced that he and his team had achieved a century-old dream of the field: a superconductor that works at room temperature and near-room pressure. Interest was so intense that
Historian Rebecca Simon writes: Anne Bonny made an unforgettable impression from the bow of the pirate ship, Revenge, in the 1700s. Beautiful with fiery red hair that matched her temperament, she’d patrol the ship wearing a jacket and trousers, with a handkerchief tied around her head. Though forced to
When Caesar saw Brutus among his attackers, Plutarch writes, ‘he covered his head with his toga and let himself fall.’ Suetonius adds that, according to some reports, he said in Greek: ‘Kai su, teknon’ (which Shakespeare turned into the Latin ‘Et tu, Brute?’). It literally means ‘You too, child,’ but
In 1952, the United States military needed leaders for a new kind of mission. It involved a treacherous journey into unexplored territory, with danger a certainty. But 28-year-old Navy Lt. James Earl Carter Jr. answered the call. “Unexplored territory,” in this case, was the aftermath of one of the world’
Jutting out of the permafrost on a mountainside on Spitsbergen, in the Svalbard archipelago, the entrance to the world’s “doomsday” seed vault is worthy of any James Bond movie. Surrounded by snow, ice and the occasional polar bear, the facility houses 1.2 million seed samples from every corner
Libby Jackson, the Head of Space Exploration in the UK, says that there is “no way” humans are the only life form in the universe. Jackson reportedly continued by saying that the existence of aliens isn’t a question of if but more a question of when we’ll find
The Lou Reed-loving Czech rock group The Plastic People of the Universe may well be the only covers band to ever alter the course of history. After tanks from the Warsaw Pact countries rolled into Prague in 1968, curtailing the liberalising and reformist Alexander Dubček, bands were told to play
Mary Godwin and her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley travelled to Europe in 1816, and went to Geneva, to stay with Lord Byron. That year was remarkable for being the "year without a summer." In 1815 there was a large volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora on the Indonesian island
The US Department of Defense’s research agency, DARPA, announced that its AI algorithms can now control an actual F-16 in flight. The fighter aircraft that was first introduced in 1978 has now seemingly evolved into an autonomous plane. “In early December 2022, ACE algorithm developers uploaded their AI software
In 1950, Johnny Cash was 18 years old. Looking for independence and a sense of purpose, Cash enlisted in the Air Force and was quickly shipped off to San Antonio, Texas, where he was stationed at the Lackland Air Force base. On March 5th, 1953, Staff Sgt Cash was manning