Is this heaven? No, but there are pieces of the heavens in Iowa — and 135 countries, all U.S. states and the United Nations. Specifically, four rice-grain-sized pieces of moon rock from the Apollo 11 mission, the first to land on the Moon. In total, the mission returned to Earth with 47.5 pounds of lunar […]
Space
Posted inCommunity/News
Northern lights appear in Iowa this week
The northern lights dipped far enough south on Tuesday night to bring a dramatic color to the sky over Iowa. The show will continue tonight, but will be primarily visible in the northern half of the state— or at least the parts of it without heavy cloud cover — according to the Space Weather Prediction […]
Posted inCommunity/News
En español: Let’s reclaim sci-fi from the billionaires
Las mentiras de la ciencia ficción capitalista La novela de ciencia ficción Snow Crash (1992) de Neil Stephenson anticipó un futuro de ciudades ultraprecarias gobernadas por grandes corporaciones, planteó la expansión de un potente cibervirus y, sobre todo, desarrolló la idea de metaverso como realidad virtual. Poco después de su publicación, varias empresas de Silicon […]
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Peak Iowa: ‘Meteor excitement’ brought a small fortune to the Amana area in the 1870s
On Friday, Feb. 12, 1875, shortly before 10:30 p.m., “one of the most brilliant meteors of modern times illuminated the entire State of Iowa, and adjacent parts of the States of Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.” “The meteor, in rapidly moving through the atmosphere, produced a great variety of sounds — rolling, rumbling, and detonations […]
Posted inCentral Iowa, Central Iowa Community/News, Community/News
Deep in a Des Moines golf course sits a haunted observatory with a far-out history
The Drake Municipal Observatory is probably the only scientific facility of its kind more familiar to local golfers than local school kids. Since 1921, it’s sat between the green on the 17th hole of Waveland Golf Course and the tee of the 18th. It’s an anomalous presence among the fairways and the nearby tennis courts, […]
