At parties, some people are intimidated when I say I'm an astronomer (or, worse, astrophysicist).  They assume I'm a haughty ivory tower genius who laughs at little people like them.  It's…

A recent survey of 'dark' gamma-ray bursts, which are bright in gamma- and X-ray emissions, but have little or no visible light, are giving us a look into the dusty corners of otherwise dust-free…

Space weather can kill astronauts. This is one of the motivations for funding space weather. Solar events-- flares, particle storms, and coronal mass ejections-- can knock out GPS and cell phone…

Mercury, closest planet to the sun, is as hot as you would expect, with daytime temperatures of 800 degrees Fahrenheit/450 degrees Celsius and because of its small size, its gravity is weak, only…

We're somewhat lost in how to meet future carbon footprint goals.  Heck, Germany should have been able to just close a few Soviet-era East German factories and hit their Kyoto protocol targets…

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.  - Richard Feynman I just read a neat HST result on dark matter on slashdot.org. I also enjoy…

The joint Japan-U.S. Suzaku mission is providing new insight into how assemblages of thousands of galaxies pull themselves together and, for the first time, Suzaku has detected X-ray-emitting gas at…

Researchers using data from NASA's THEMIS mission have pinpointed the impact epicenter of an earthbound space storm as it crashes into the atmosphere - and given an advance warning of its arrival.…

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has found a cosmic "ghost" lurking around a distant supermassive black hole. This is the first detection of such a high-energy apparition, and scientists think it is…

A post-doc is extremely low on the totem pole of authority.  The ranking goes roughly: Principal Investigators and Branch Heads, Staff Scientists, Secretaries, Soft-Money Scientists, Technical…