This section of the site deals with a number of interesting topics in the physical sciences.
A Few Words About Stars: This page introduces a few basic facts about why stars shine, as well as describing a few unusual types of star you may hear about from time to time.
The Equation of Time: This page attempts to illustrate how Kepler's Laws and the axial tilt of the Earth that also gives rise to the seasons combine to produce the discrepancy between mean solar time and the time as indicated directly by a sundial.
Introducing Special Relativity: A small page helping to make its apparent paradoxes understandable.
Calendars: This series of pages discusses subjects such as perpetual calendars, and timekeeping on Mars.
A Space Habitat Design: This page examines the idea of space habitats with artificial gravity from rotation, such as proposed by Gerard O'Neill, and deals with an objection to them based on the problems posed by cosmic rays.
Travel to Mars: This page discusses how Dr. Robert Zubrin's proposal to send people to Mars at a reduced cost could be improved to reduce the need to develop new heavy-lift boosters.
The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiments: This page discusses a paradoxical phenomenon in quantum mechanics, and why, at least from a pedestrian perspective, it suggests that faster-than-light space travel may indeed be possible.
The Fine-Structure Constant: This page talks about the mysterious number 137, and explains where this profoundly mysterious dimensionless physical constant came from.
Punctuated Equilibria: Here, we venture into the biological sciences from the physical sciences, and try to put the discovery of Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould into perspective... in relation to the concept of progress as evolution's "most important product" (pace General Electric) despite that being a human assignment of value, and not, as Stephen Jay Gould correctly pointed out, something inherently significant to nature.
Telescopes and Eyepieces: This series of pages deals with astronomical telescopes, with particular relevance to the amateur astronomer, and includes a small beginning discussion of optics.
The Inconstant Moon: This page discusses how the motion of a planet in an elliptical orbit is calculated, and the additional calculations required for a simple approximate calculation of the Moon's motion.