Science Metaphors (cont.): Sub-Virial

A neighborhood kid, maybe 10 years old, doesn’t have the usual relationship with gravity.  I know it’s her even when I can’t see her clearly by the way she moves through space: even when she’s not running, just walking, she looks like she might re-connect with the earth but also she might not.  She reminds […]

Science Metaphors (cont.): Sub-Grid Physics

Science, so useful to our lives in so many ways, also usefully supplies metaphors from which we may find comfort or edification. An astronomer told me that the galaxy we live in, the Milky Way, was surrounded by a tenuous halo of hot gas.  “How can gas stay hot, out there in space?”  I asked.  […]