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Essays on planetary science, the philosophy and ethics of research, and the occasional excursion into literature and data.
Infernal Republic
Here, I had to test a Roman Republic-style political simulation into a literary moral map. A senate governs under normal conditions, but crises can activate an emergency autocrat. Beneath that constitutional switch sits a richer system of patronage, propaganda, delayed legislation, factional…
The Earth’s Layers as a Dessert?
Some numbers in science just refuse to fit inside my head. The core of the Sun burns at over 15 million °C. The Earth has been around for 4.6 billion years. Nanoparticles measure mere billionths of a meter. I can write those values down, but I can’t really feel them: they’re too big, too small, too…
The Line Between Science and Pseudoscience: Understanding Popper's Falsification Principle
Every so often someone asks me, half-jokingly, whether what I do is "real science." It's a fair question, and it's the same one Karl Popper spent his life trying to answer. How do you tell the difference between a theory that's genuinely scientific and one that just sounds scientific? His answer…
The Dual Face of Scientific Ethics: Navigating Responsibilities Between Laboratory and Society
I don't think the bond between science and society has ever felt this tangled, or this high-stakes. Our capabilities are racing ahead - gene editing one year, artificial intelligence the next - and the old question keeps getting louder: when something goes wrong, who's on the hook? The scientist at…