Seven amazing things we take for granted most of the time, ordered from least to most weird

February 19, 2021

1. How much dogs love us. There is no way we've been good enough boys/girls/humans to deserve this. 2. Popcorn. It's freakily amazing that corn kernels turn into this stuff. And as a bonus, it's delicious. 3. That humans, working together, eradicated the last wild strain of smallpox in the 1970s. This was a mind-blowingly huge win for our species. It had plagued us since ~3rd century BCE and is estimated to have killed ~500 million people just during the last 100 years it w...

Remaining Mysteries of the Universe

September 28, 2019

It's fascinating to me that, despite all of humanity's incredible progress over the last few thousand years, so many profound mysteries about the nature of reality remain. Below is my list of what I see as the deepest mysteries. What would you add to the list? — LIST OF DEEP MYSTERIES ABOUT THE NATURE OF REALITY — 1. THE UNIVERSE 1.1 Eternity - Will our universe last forever? If it won't, what will the end of the universe be like (e.g., a new big bang, a big crun...

Genesis according to science: The Empirical Creation Story

February 8, 2009

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-delivers-deepest-infrared-image-of-universe-yet

This was first written on February 8, 2009. I put it up on this site on February 10, 2023. 1 In the beginning, the big bang created the heavens. 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 The universe was formless and infinitesimal. Plasma hotter than a thousand suns permeated the explosively expanding fabric of space. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of t...