A Scientific American
My father didn’t go to college, but he was a scientist. After he died, I inherited his old copies of Scientific American—dating from the 1960s to the early 2000s.
Category: FEATURES
The Moth Hunters
Bathed in violet light, two men search the white expanse of cloth, oblivious to their surroundings. Disoriented insects of various shapes and sizes swoop around the men’s heads. Many of the insects eventually land on the sheet. With a deft motion, one of the men captures a specimen and examines the vial in which a pale-colored moth flutters.
Cochise Stronghold
I climb into the truck and check the map again. After leaving Tucson, I-10 E to El Paso drifts past towns with names like “Dragoon”, “Cochise” and “Bowie”. My daughter should be with me. This should be her pilgrimage. As I drive, the sights and smells of the Southwest bombard me through the gap in the driver’s side window—dry desert sand, the smoky smell of mesquite, and sage. I’m headed to sacred places that don’t belong to me.
Rock Tasting at Biosphere 2
With a mischievous grin and gleaming dark eyes, Dr. Dragos Zaharescu raises a small spatula to his lips and tastes. At his feet are four containers, each filled with a different type of ground rock—granite, basalt, rhyolite or schist. Zaharescu will blend this rock with bacteria or fungus, creating a sandy medium for seedlings he grows here under the glass dome of Biosphere 2.