Science is a cooperative enterprise spanning the generations. It's the passing of a torch from teacher to student to teacher; a community of minds reaching back to antiquity, and forward to the stars.
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Steven Soter
Steven Soter is an astrophysicist currently holding the positions of scientist-in-residence for New York University's Environmental Studies Program and of Research Associate for the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. He is a proponent of the International Astronomical Union's definition of planet. 2Education Soter received his Bachelor's degree in astronomy and physics from UCLA in 1965 (advisors George Abell and Peter Goldreich) and his doctorate in astronomy from Cornell University in 1971 (advisors Thomas Gold, Carl Sagan, and Joseph Burns). 2Career in astrophysics In 1974, Soter suggested that dust produced by meteoritic bombardment of Saturn's moon Phoebe might orbit the planet until colliding with Saturn's moon Iapetus and be responsible for the unique dark-bright dichotomy of the latter. Although not the unique cause, dust originating from Saturn's irregular satellites was later found in data from the Cassini spacecraft to indeed play a crucial role in the coloration of Iapetus. The discovery of Saturn's "Phoebe ring" in 2009 further strengthened the probability that this process first described by Soter plays a significant role in shaping Iapetus's appearance.In 1977-1979, Soter co-wrote, along with Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's monumental 1980 astronomy documentary series Cosmos. Since then, he has also acted as advisor on a number of science documentaries, such as the IMAX films Blue Planet and Cosmic Voyage. In 1997, Soter took a position at the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium, and eventually progressed to the position of research associate. He also made significant contributions to research related to the ancient Greek city Helike. In 2007, after the IAU voted on a definition of planet, Soter published an article in Scientific American in which he outlined a mathematical formulation, the "planetary discriminant," to describe how the IAU's requirement that a planet must have "cleared its neighborhood" of other objects might be applied in practic
Many of us suspect that all of this—all the worlds, stars, galaxies and clusters in our observable universe—is but one tiny bubble in an infinite ocean of other universes; a multiverse. Universe upon universe; worlds without end.
Science works on the frontier between knowledge and ignorance. We're not afraid to admit what we don't know. There's no shame in that. The only shame is to pretend that we have all the answers.
The Theory of Evolution, like the Theory of Gravity, is a scientific fact. Evolution really happened. Accepting our kinship with all life on Earth is not only solid science, in my view, it's also a soaring spiritual experience.
If life has a sanctuary, it's here in the nucleus, which contains our DNA—the ancient scripture of our genetic code. And it's written in a language that all life can read.
Every star is a sun as big, as bright as our own. Just imagine how far away from us you'd have to move the Sun to make it appear as small and faint as a star. The light from the stars travels very fast, faster than anything, but not infinitely fast. It takes time for their light to reach us. For the…
Some stars are so far away, it takes eons for their light to get to Earth. By the time the light from some stars gets here, they are already dead. For those stars, we see only their ghosts.
Nothing lasts forever; even the stars die.
There are many kinds of stars. Some are bright like the Sun. Some are dim. The greatest stars are ten million times larger than the smallest ones. Some stars are old beyond imagining, more than ten billion years of age. Others are being born right now. When atoms fuse in the hearts of stars, they…
For thousands of generations we watched the stars as if our lives depended on it, because they did….[O]ur ancestors noticed that the motions of the stars across the nights of the year foretold changes on Earth that threatened or enhanced our chances for survival.
Congratulations. You're alive. There's an unbroken thread that stretches across more than three billion years that connects us to the first life that ever touched this world. Think of how tough, resourceful and lucky all of our countless ancestors must have been to survive long enough to pass on the…
Few animals larger than a hundred pounds survived the catastrophes of the late Cretaceous. The dust cloud brought night and cold to the surface for months. The dinosaurs froze and starved to death. But there were small creatures who took shelter in the Earth. And when they emerged they found that…
Two-thirds of the Earth lies beneath more than 1,000 feet of water. It's a vast and largely unexplored frontier....This is the longest submarine mountain range in the world, the Atlantic Mid-Ocean Ridge. It wraps around our globe like the seam on a baseball. The past is another planet, but most of…
By burning coal, oil and gas, our civilization is exhaling carbon dioxide much faster than Earth can absorb it. So, CO2 is building up in the atmosphere. The planet is heating up.
Why is Venus scorching hot? It's because…the flow of energy is blocked by a dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide….Venus is in the grip of a runaway greenhouse effect.