WELCOME
Thanks for coming to visit my website. I write about science, technology, foreign affairs, and other subjects.
Follow me on Twitter: @kkakaesDrones and Aerial Observation
I edited and wrote part of a short book published by New America in July 2015 and freely available online, about how drones are being used in new ways around the world. It's meant to be useful to people who want to fly drones.The Pioneer Detectives
I published a short book with The Millions.
It's the story of the Pioneer Anomaly, a long-standing mystery. The book is short and fun—the length of a novella—but also, in the words of Amazon's reviewer, "powerful and sad". If you've got any curiosity about how NASA works behind the scenes or why scientists believe what they do, I think you'll enjoy the book.
It is available on Amazon as a Kindle Single and also on Apple's iBooks.Drone Wars
I wrote a chapter on the long history of drone technology going back to the early 20th century in this edited Cambridge University Press volume.
Looking for ET
25 February 2010
Signs of life
As the search for alien life turns 50, its practitioners find new methods
Dodging bullets…
30 September 2004
Far away, so close
A large asteroid sweeps by the Earth. Where are the others?
Looking for planets around distant stars
23 September 2004
In search of the Earth Mark II
Terrestrial exoplanets will likely be found soon.
Telescopes in orbit
28 August 2004
X-ray specs
A retrospective on NASA’s Great Observatories, Compton, and Spitzer.
Understanding gravity
21 August 2004
An invisible hand
A gravitational mystery affecting pendulums and satellites–could General Relativity be wrong?
Quantum oddities
17 June 2004
In the twinkling of an ion
Two groups have succeeded in teleporting quantum states.
Understanding gravity
15 April 2004
Turn, turn, turn
A new satellite, Gravity Probe B, will test Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.
Novel computational techniques
1 April 2004
Bit by bit
Developments in quantum computing and chaotic computing
Standard modelling
27 March 2004
Precise in every part
A new measurement of the muon is revealing problems with the standard model of physics.
The outer solar system
20 March 2004
10 Planets, or 8?
A new object has been detected far beyond Pluto
Bounding information
6 March 2004
Hair today
String theory might reveal the internal structure of black holes
Towards the planck length
28 February 2004
Atto boy!
The shortest time, and smallest mass, yet measured
Climbing the periodic table
5 February 2004
Two new elements
A Russian-American collaboration has created two new chemical elements.
Modern-day aether?
5 February 2004
A cosmological conundrum
What if the dark energy and dark matter essential to modern explanations of the universe don’t really exist?