Diana Steele

All Stories by Diana Steele

  1. blackpoll warbler
    Animals

    A naturalist writes an homage to bird migration

    In ‘A Season on the Wind,’ Kenn Kaufman shares his lifelong obsession for and awe of spring bird migration.

  2. Calabi-Yau manifolds
    Math

    A mathematician traces his journey from poverty to prominence

    In 'The Shape of Life,' Shing-Tung Yau describes his groundbreaking work in geometry, which provided insights into string theory.

  3. Tropical Storm Harvey
    Math

    ‘Weird Math’ aims to connect numbers and equations to the real world

    The book Weird Math attempts to make chaos theory, higher dimensions and other concepts more relatable.

  4. Illustration of Henry Hudson meeting Native Americans
    Climate

    Climate foiled Europeans’ early exploration of North America

    The book ‘A Cold Welcome’ examines how the Little Ice Age and other climatic and geographic factors shaped colonial history.

  5. Lonni Sue Johnson word search
    Neuroscience

    Artist’s amnesia could help unlock mysteries of memory

    In "The Perpetual Now", journalist Michael Lemonick looks at what an artist’s memory loss can teach neuroscientists about the brain.

  6. Hunting Hidden Dimensions

    In many ways, black holes are science’s answer to science fiction. As strange as anything from a novelist’s imagination, black holes warp the fabric of spacetime and imprison light and matter in a gravitational death grip. Their bizarre properties make black holes ideal candidates for fictional villainy. But now black holes are up for a […]

  7. Earth

    For a big view of inner Earth, catch a few … Geoneutrinos

  8. Astronomy

    When Worlds Collide

    Science fiction movies and books are full of parallel universes. CRASH COURSE Microwave radiation traveling across the universe appears mostly uniform — as shown in the larger sphere — except for tiny temperature variations (red and blue) that indicate the locations of the seeds of future galaxies and other structures. Some cosmologists now say that […]