Science writing news

Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars, but the 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics went to her male academic advisor—not a unique story. In She Can STEM: 50 Trailblazing Women in Science from Ancient History to Today, Liz Lee Heinecke chronicles 50 women scientists’ successes and struggles. Each account includes a guide to help readers ages 7-12 conduct topic-related experiments of their own at home.

“Much of scientific inquiry, like poetry, involves play and metaphor and idiosyncratic obsessions and just plain fiddling around,” Nell Greenfieldboyce asserts. In Transient And Strange: Notes on the Science of Life, she employs these same tactics to explore the nature of tornados, meteorites, black holes, lives of fleas and spiders, doodling, quality of silence, making of toast, and making of babies.

Moon dust smells like wet ashes and sticks to everything, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin found on their 1969 moon landing. They slept with helmets on to avoid breathing it in. In Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are, Rebecca Boyle covers moon science from the moon’s formation up to recent attempts to monetize it as a graveyard.

Mammoths twice the size of today’s biggest elephants, an Ice Age ground sloth 9 ft tall, and voracious moon snails come to life in Spirit Whales & Sloth Tales: Fossils of Washington State. Paleontologist Elizabeth Nesbitt and NASW member David Williams discuss 24 fossils dating from 12,000 years to 520 million years ago including Washington’s most unusual fossil, a 16 million-year-old rhinoceros.

As climate change ramps up, so do flooding and droughts. Humans have altered 75% of the world’s land area, exacerbating these problems. In Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge, Erica Gies tracks global efforts that use satellite data, systems thinking, and other tactics to absorb floods, save and recapture water, stanch plant and animal loss, and help restore our environment.

Disabled researchers remain highly underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, Skylar Bayer and Gabi Serrato Marks note. Despite ADA requirements, many schools and worksites offer few accommodations. In Uncharted: How Scientists Navigate Their Own Health, Research, and Experiences of Bias, Bayer, Marks and 30 other scientists recount struggles, setbacks, and successes.

“We can’t understand the measurable, material universe beyond our minds without first understanding our minds,” George Musser asserts. He describes physicists’ efforts to achieve that goal by building and testing concrete models that illuminate the mind in Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation: Why Physicists are Studying Human Consciousness and AI to Unravel the Mysteries of the Universe.

Science is like a jigsaw puzzle, environmental chemist Christopher Reddy asserts. In talking with the media and public in times of crisis, scientists may focus on small pieces while audiences seek a big picture, often while events still are evolving. In Science Communication in a Crisis: An Insider’s Guide, Reddy offers lessons derived from how he and other scientists conveyed info on eco-crises.

Ann Parson drew on news reports and other records to illuminate the awakening of the sciences in this country in the 1800s. In The Birds of Dog: An Historical Novel Based on Mostly True Events, she highlights growing efforts to protect birds and other wildlife from hunters’ “kill-and-collect” methods, explorers’ travels, and the repercussions of inventions such as photography and the telegraph.