Priyamvada Natarajan | The New York Review of Books

A Proclivity for the Unknown

“I was always attracted by the cosmos—the night sky and the deep, dark mysteries it held have always seduced me.”

June 5, 2021

All Things Great and Small

The origins and fates of atoms and galaxies are closely intertwined.

Neutron Stars: The Quest to Understand the Zombies of the Cosmos

by Katia Moskvitch

The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)

by Katie Mack

Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality

by Frank Wilczek

July 1, 2021 issue

Pluto, July 2015; photographed by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, with enhanced color

In Search of Planet X

Discovering Pluto: Exploration at the Edge of the Solar System

by Dale P. Cruikshank and William Sheehan

Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto

by Alan Stern and David Grinspoon

Should We Colonize Other Planets?

by Adam Morton

October 24, 2019 issue

Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician who calculated the reentry trajectory for John Glenn’s Mercury Friendship 7 mission as he returned from orbiting the earth, 1962

Calculating Women

Science is not an activity reserved for male geniuses working on their own.

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

by Margot Lee Shetterly

The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars

by Dava Sobel

Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars

by Nathalia Holt

May 25, 2017 issue

Einstein’s Observers

September 29, 2016 issue

A computer simulation of the collision of two black holes, which merged about 1.3 billion years ago to form a single black hole sixty-two times the mass of the sun. The gravitational waves were detected last September by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which announced the discovery in February 2016.

After Einstein: The Dark Mysteries

Black Hole: How an Idea Abandoned by Newtonians, Hated by Einstein, and Gambled on by Hawking Became Loved

by Marcia Bartusiak

The Hunt for Vulcan: ...And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe

by Thomas Levenson

June 9, 2016 issue

Letter

Leo Sartori

Einstein’s Observers

September 29, 2016 issue

Pillinger Point, on the western rim of Endeavour Crater, Mars, May 14, 2014; detail from a panoramic photograph taken by NASA's Opportunity rover

The New Beyond

Several exciting discoveries in the cosmos are helping us reframe many age-old questions. Is there life elsewhere? Are we alone?

November 12, 2015

What Astro Images Do

July 9, 2015 issue

The Horsehead Nebula in the constellation of Orion, about 1,500 light years from the earth, as seen from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii; from Michael Benson’s book Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle (2009)

Revelations from Outer Space

Beyond generating awe and wonder, what scientific purposes do astronomical images serve?

Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time

by Michael Benson

You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes—Photographs from the International Space Station

by Chris Hadfield

Interstellar

a film directed by Christopher Nolan

The Science of Interstellar

by Kip Thorne, with a foreword by Christopher Nolan

May 21, 2015 issue

Letter

Michael Benson

What Astro Images Do

July 9, 2015 issue

When Einstein Was Wrong

December 4, 2014 issue

Chesley Bonestell: Saturn as Seen from Titan [Its Moon], 1944; from Michael Benson’s Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time, to be published by Abrams in November. ‘Along with French illustrator and astronomer Lucien Rudaux,’ Benson writes, Bonestell ‘pioneered a genre of speculative solar system landscapes sometimes called “space art”...We now know that Titan’s atmosphere is so thick, a view like this would be impossible, which takes nothing away from the power of Bonestell’s achievement.’

What Scientists Really Do

How could the public be better educated about the nature of scientific inquiry?

Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything

by Philip Ball

Ignorance: How It Drives Science

by Stuart Firestein

October 23, 2014 issue

Letter

Jeremy Bernstein

When Einstein Was Wrong

December 4, 2014 issue