Must-See Space Events of 2017

From the moon and Jupiter getting extra close in April, to a total eclipse of the sun set to cross the USA in August, and the always-spectacular annual Geminid meteor shower (where up to 120 shooting stars fly across the sky), 2017 is set to be yet another year to keep looking up. With a list of the seven occurrences, National Geographic has set up …

The Octopus is Basically an Intelligent Alien

Considering some 95% of the ocean is unexplored, it makes perfect sense that the new book “Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness” calls the octopus “the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.” Written by Peter Godfrey-Smith (an Australia-born, NYC-based philosopher who focuses on biology and teaches at City University of New York’s graduate center), the book …

Link About It: This Week’s Picks

How Mozart outsold Drake, a long-lost Leonardo da Vinci sketch, airplane upgrades and more in our look at the web

1. The Principals’ Sound Journeys Using field recordings documented by Chris Watson (the guy behind all of David Attenborough’s intoxicating wildlife documentaries), Brooklyn-based design studio The Principals recently created an interactive journey that guides visitors through the sounds of the natural world. Participants walk through three distinct aural zones—forest, canyon and sea—as sound elements like winds gusting across Norwegian islands or seals singing in Antarctica …