The Quest for Infinite Energy
Real stars, the ones in space, are simple beasts. Our sun formed some 4.6 billion years ago from a cloud consisting of essentially one ingredient: hydrogen, the most basic and abundant element in the universe… Source
Michael Finkel
Author and Journalist
Latest posts
The Vanishing Beauty of Brazil’s Cerrado
It’s called the Cerrado, Portuguese for “closed,” and for nearly all of human history this vast tropical savanna in central Brazil seems to have been shut off from the rest of the world… Source
”Arresting and poignant“
In a world of easy online connection, the fact of a human body becomes a high-risk encounter, something chaotic and best avoided. Knight, who disappeared long before he had the chance to go online, was perhaps just ahead of the curve. Everyone with a smartphone is, on some abstract level, a hermit themselves, for we [ ] Source
”…a story about a person who doesn’t fit in“
In “The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit,” Finkel chronicles Knight’s story, one he calls “bizarre and weird and brilliant and disturbing.” The book draws on the author’s visits with Knight at the Kennebec County Correctional Facility, as well as the history of those who have sought solitude — [ ] Source
Star Eater
Our star, the sun, will die a quiet death. The sun's of only average mass, starwise, and after burning through the last of its hydrogen fuel in about five billion years, its outer layers will drift away Source
First Australians
A finger across the throat and a glance seaward. That’s the signal. The two men grip their spears, hand-carved from stringybark trees, and walk barefoot over the red soil to the water’s edge… Source
Stranded on the Roof of the World
The Khan dreams of a car. Never mind that there isn’t a road. His father, the previous Khan, spent his life lobbying for a road. The new Khan does the same. A road, he argues, would permit doctors, and their medicines, to easily reach them. Then maybe all the dying would stop. Teachers too could [ ] Source
No Nothing
These are my final words: “Why a camp chair?” I speak them to a man named Wade. Wade from Minnesota. I’m in line behind him, waiting to enter the Dhamma Giri meditation center, in the quiet hill country of western India, for the official start of the 10-day course. Wade tells me that this is [ ] Source
Uncatchable
It’s past ten o’clock in the evening, a rude hour to knock on someone’s front door, but George Wright’s attorney has assured me that this is the best time… Source
Here Be Monsters
A crewman on a commercial tuna-fishing boat was the first to spot it: something shiny and metallic in the water off the ship’s bow. The crewman alerted the navigator, and the 280-foot San Nikunau slightly altered course to avoid a collision... Source