Author: Matthew R. Francis
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The future of transportation will (probably) not include teleportation
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] Why We’ll (Probably) Never Be Able to Teleport For Curiosity: For many of us, teleportation would be the absolute best way to travel. Imagine just stepping into a transporter…
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In awe of the size of this black hole. Absolute unit.
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] How Big (or Small) Can a Black Hole Get? For Curiosity: The biggest astronomy story of 2019 arguably was the first-ever image of a black hole, captured by a…
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If the world stopped turning
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] What If Earth Stopped Turning? For Curiosity: Earth is spinning on its axis, completing one rotation every 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.1 seconds. That spin brings us day…
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The science connecting extreme weather to climate change
The linked article is for SIAM News, the magazine for members of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). The audience for this magazine, in other words, is professional mathematicians and related researchers working in a wide variety of fields. While this article contains (just a few simple) equations, I wrote it to be…
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The world … er, the universe is flat!
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] What’s the Shape of the Universe? A New Study Is Sparking Debate For Curiosity: What is the shape of the universe? The universe is everything that we can observe,…
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MY BOOK CHAPTER! The architecture of Fermilab
I’m a science writer by profession (obviously), but occasionally I get the chance to write about something fun that’s only tangentially related to science. A while back, Belt Publishers — which publishes books and a magazine about the part of the American Midwest known as the Rust Belt — solicited pitches for chapters on a…
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Protecting privacy with mathematics
The linked article is for SIAM News, the magazine for members of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). The audience for this magazine, in other words, is professional mathematicians and related researchers working in a wide variety of fields. While the article contains equations, I wrote it to be understandable even if you…
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“Peanuts”, vaccination, and the limits of persuasion
In my new comic with Maki Naro, we go meta: using a comic to talk about a comic! Specifically, we comics’ed about one of the most beloved comic strips of all time, Charles M. Schulz’ “Peanuts”. While the strip mostly steered clear of the issues of the day, occasionally Schulz did include topical material. One…
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Gravitational waves and climate change
Since early 2018, I’ve contributed multiple articles to Mercury, the membership magazine for the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP). These articles are only available in full to members of ASP, but recently Mercury has put extensive previews for certain articles up on the website as enticement to join. One of those articles is my…
Bowler Hat Science 