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2022: The Year in Review

The Editors

[long_description] As the end of the year approaches, the editors are delighted to present our second annual review, highlighting the essays that best represent our aims, ambitions, attitudes, and even our animadversions. Collected here are some notable essays we published this year, some illuminating exchanges from our letters section, and a selection of our favorite links from The Rambler.

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A First Year of Discovery

Casey Papovich

[short_description] As one of the scientists who will be using the James Webb Space Telescope, Casey Papovich examines how the Webb may answer deep questions about exoplanets and the formation of the first galaxies.

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Andalusian Astronomy in the Eleventh Century

Julio Samsó

[short_description] The eleventh-century astronomer Ibn al-Zarqālluh has been long established as the most important astronomer of the Islamic West. His ideas remained influential in Europe into the fifteenth century.

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Lost in Space

Michael Fumento

[short_description] Sending to humans into space, Michael Fumento argues, is an enormous waste of time, money, and resources. There is little to be gained and previous claimed benefits have not amounted to much.

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The First Golden Age of Islamic Science

Julio Samsó

[short_description] One of the most significant figures in the Islamic Golden Age was the polymath and scholar Al-Bīrūnī. Julio Samsó provides an account of Al-Bīrūnī’s life and his work on astronomy and mathematics.

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Homage to Quietanus

Jacques Mertzeisen & Jean-Pierre Luminet

[short_description] A puzzling sundial, a transit of Mercury, letters with Kepler and Galileo, and a long-forgotten astronomer. Jacques Mertzeisen and Jean-Pierre Luminet tell the story of Johannes Remus Quietanus.

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The Provençal Humanists and Copernicus

Jean-Pierre Luminet

[short_description] In the early 17th-century, the fate of the Copernican revolution was uncertain. The Provençal humanists Peiresc and Gassendi continued the revolution and shaped the development of Western science.

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It’s You, Again

Daniel Kleitman

[short_description] Must there be an infinite number of copies of you, in an infinite number of local universes? Mathematician Daniel Kleitman says no. A review of Max Tegmark’s Our Mathematical Universe.

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Good God!

Luke Barnes

[short_description] Even an atheist has to believe something. Luke Barnes reviews Sean Carroll’s The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself, and his construction of an atheistic worldview.

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Across the Universe

Steven Wheeler

[short_description] The detection of gravitational waves by LIGO made global news. Steven Wheeler looks at the technological achievement and its contentious history, and considers the future of gravitational astronomy.

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The Holographic Universe

Jean-Pierre Luminet

[short_description] How is a black hole in 5-D space like a 4-D particle/radiation field? Jean-Pierre Luminet explains the holographic principle, the Maldacena conjecture, and the resolution of the information paradox.

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Ptolemy versus Copernicus

Frank Tipler & Wesley Bollinger

[short_description] Between 1564 and his death in 1601, Tycho Brahe compared predictions made using the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems with his own. Frank Tipler examines the data Brahe recorded in his notebooks.

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