My most recent articles are linked through the Bowler Hat Science blog, linked in the sidebar. The category on each post links to all articles for a given publication.

Articles, features, contributions

The publications below are listed in alphabetical order. Please contact me if you would like to commission a piece.

Aeon Magazine

• Is this real life or a simulation? (January 21, 2014)
• Cognitive celebrity: Albert Einstein was a genius, but he wasn’t the only one – why has his name come to mean something superhuman? (July 23, 2014)

Ars Technica (frequent articles)

• Representative article: What killed the white dwarfs (aside from the giant explosion)? (May 20, 2015)
• Series on dark matter
  • The quiet search for dark matter deep underground (July 8, 2014) — a visit to the LUX dark matter detector in South Dakota
  • Where is the dark matter? (July 28, 2014) — mapping the location of dark matter in relation to visible matter
  • Exploring the monstrous creatures at the edges of the dark matter map (September 30, 2014) — what if the most popular hypothesis about the nature of dark matter is wrong?
• Author page

Astronomy Magazine

• How Does Sound Travel on Mars? (April 24, 2017)

The Atlantic

• The Dawn of a New Era In Science (February 11, 2016) — news feature on the first direct detection of gravitational waves by LIGO

BBC Future

• Representative article: Will we ever… create a black hole in the laboratory? (July 16, 2013)
• Complete list of contributions

The Daily Beast (weekly column during 2014)

• Representative article: Black hole pair caught in a feeding frenzy
• Complete article listing

Double X Science

• Representative post: Parallel Earth and the Evil Matthew Hypothesis (September 9, 2013)
• Complete list of contributions

The Finch and the Pea

• How do you teach your cat about evolution?

Forbes

• Sample story: The Problem With Naming Observatories For Bigots (June 11, 2015)
• complete list of contributions

Galileo’s Pendulum (personal science blog)

• If you love a flower found on a star… (about The Little Prince‘s asteroid)
• The problem of Richard Feynman
• Big Telescopes Reveal the Maelstrom Around a Black Hole
• Me, Ludwig Boltzmann, Ludwig Boltzmann and I
• Imaginary Numbers are Real

Hakai Magazine

• Europa’s Salty Seas (May 5, 2015)

Medium

• Exploring Black Holes: Frozen Stars and Gravitational Dynamos (July 24, 2017; content for Medium members)

Mosaic Science

• Feature article: What is life? (October 20, 2015)
• Related content:
  • Interview and panel discussion on This Week in Science (October 21, 2015): YouTube / podcast

Nautilus (2013–present)

• Feature article: How to Clock a Glacier (March 12, 2015)
• Feature article: What’s 250 Million Light-Years Big, Almost Empty, and Full of Answers? (August 7, 2014)
• Representative post: How to Map a Galaxy When You’re Right in the Middle of It (December 23, 2013)
• Complete list of contributions

New Scientist

• NASA probe about to leave for asteroid Bennu and bring bits home (Sept. 6, 2016)

NOVA “The Nature of Reality”

• The Shadow of a Black Hole (August 21, 2015)
• Do We Need to Rewrite General Relativity? (June 18, 2015)
• Does Antimatter Fall Up or Down? (November 19, 2014)
• What is the Shape of a Proton? (November 5, 2014)
• The Astronomical Particle Colliders That Put Our Own to Shame (July 21, 2014)

New Yorker “Elements”

• How to Name a Planet (April 24, 2013)

The Nib

• Science is Political; Don’t Let Anyone Tell you Otherwise (comics collaboration with Maki Naro, March 13, 2017)
• Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Elon Musk Thinks So (comics collaboration with Maki Naro, December 5, 2016)

Philosophie Magazine

• Vivons-nous dans une simulation? (Translation of “Is this real life or a simulation” with some additional material)

Physics World

• Feature article: “Deducing how dinosaurs moved” (February 2017 print issue, full text online)
• Feature article: “Not-so-standard candles” (October 2015 print issue; free PDF here courtesy of Physics World)
• Complete list of Physics World contributions

Scientific American

• Weird X-Rays Spur Speculation about Dark Matter Detection (January 26, 2015)

Slate 

• Representative article: Do we live in a 10-dimensional hologram? (December 16, 2013)
• Author page

Smithsonian Magazine

• How Albert Einstein Used His Fame to Denounce American Racism (March 3, 2017)
• The Hidden Connections Between Darwin and the Physicist Who Championed Entropy (December 15, 2016)
• “Weak Lensing” Helps Astronomers Map the Mass of the Universe

Symmetry Magazine

• Author page with complete list of contributions
• Representative article: Dark horse of the dark matter hunt (January 13, 2015)
• Profile: Of symmetries, the strong force and Helen Quinn (January 27, 2015)

Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine

• The Universe is Ringing (also in July 2015 print edition)
• The First Sighting of a Black Hole (in the February 2017 print edition)

Undark Magazine

• What City Ants Can Teach Us About Species Evolution And Climate Change (July 19, 2017)

Universe Today

• Taking Measure: A ‘New’ Most Distant Galaxy (October 23, 2013)
• Some Planet-like Kuiper Belt Objects Don’t Play “Nice” (January 16, 2014)

 Older contributions (pre-2012)

Culture of Science

• Citizen Science as a Cure for Scientific Isolation (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Scientific American Guest Blog

• What we know about black holes (September 2, 2011)
• What does the new double-slit experiment actually show? (June 7, 2011)

365 Days of Astronomy Podcast

• The biggest things in the Universe (audio / transcript)
• Seeing through gravity’s lens (audio / transcript)