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Science

Explorations of scientific discovery, research, and the natural world, ranging from physics to biology to astronomy.

16 posts

A subset of these posts is syndicated to the Rogue Scholar science blog archive via a dedicated feed — Atom or JSON Feed — and licensed under CC BY 4.0 rather than this site's usual CC BY-SA 4.0. Posts in that feed are marked below.

Northern Renaissance oil painting of an elderly bearded scholar in a red robe and blue cap, seated at a cluttered desk, resting his head on one hand while pointing at a human skull with the other. The desk holds an open illuminated manuscript, a book labeled 'Biblia Greca,' a Hebrew scroll, an hourglass, a candle, spectacles, and a penknife. A red plaque above reads 'COGITA MORI' (contemplate death). Through an open window behind him, a landscape unfolds with a hilltop castle, a village, and small figures on a road.

A Guide to Becoming a Rogue Scholar

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I've been weighing grad school against continuing my own open-access publication, so I wrote a guide to becoming a 'Rogue Scholar' using ORCID, citation metadata, issue numbers, print CSS, and Wayback Machine archiving to try to make my static Eleventy site as citable, permanent, and discoverable as institutional scholarship.
Oil painting in the Dutch Golden Age style depicting Jacob's Dream: a youth reclines asleep on rocky ground, one arm raised behind their head, wrapped loosely at the waist in an orange-red cloth draped over dark green foliage. A brown-and-white spaniel dog dozes across their legs. In the upper left, a stone stairway extends into a luminous, cloud-filled sky where small winged angel figures climb between earth and heaven, bathed in golden light against a distant blue landscape.

Confessions of a Maladaptive Daydreamer

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A personal tale living with maladaptive daydreaming—intense, immersive daydreams that replace rather than accompany real life. On Eli Somer's research, the difference between paracosms and maladaptive daydreaming, trauma connections, and how this coping mechanism became both a refuge and a source of enjoyment.
Hand-colored 19th-century engraving captioned 'Fig. 2. — Le globe de feu dans la salle' (The fireball in the room), signed Poyet. The image is tinted in vertical bands like a spectrum, shifting left to right from deep green through yellow-green, warm maroon-red, violet, and pale blue-gray. A glowing yellow-white ball of light hovers near a fireplace on the green-toned left side, casting a beam across the room toward four startled men in period suits, rendered mostly in reddish-purple tones, gathered around chairs and gesturing in alarm.

Our Skies Contain Sprites, Elves, Trolls, Pixies, Ghosts, and Gnomes

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Yes, really. Exploring the magical world of transient luminous events in the upper atmosphere: sprites, elves, blue jets, trolls, pixies, ghosts, and gnomes. How scientists named these barely-witnessed electrical phenomena after folklore, and why scientific wonder and awe are not opposed to rational inquiry but essential to it.
A bright computer lab with rows of desktop computers arranged on long tables. Each workstation features a bulky CRT monitor, tower computer, keyboard, mouse on a red mouse pad, and a headset hanging from the monitor. A whiteboard is mounted on the back wall, framed posters decorate the room, and fluorescent ceiling lights illuminate the clean, empty classroom.

Wow, I Love the 'Puter!

The desktop computer is a miracle of human ingenuity, from the microscopic precision of Intel's Core Duo processor to the vast possibilities of offline and online computing. On the tragic decline of desktop towers, the IndieWeb and open-source software as alternatives to corporate platforms, and why we should take the time to become system admins and webmasters.
A four-panel Korean folding screen with a gold background, each panel depicting open shelving filled with neatly stacked books and decorative objects. The shelves contain ceramics, a teapot, flowering bulbs, writing brushes, an inkstone, fruit in a bowl, jade and carved ornaments, and other scholarly and ornamental items, arranged in a balanced, geometric composition with muted blues, greens, reds, browns, and white.

What have note-taking PKMs accomplished, really?

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As somebody who writes a lot, I've always been interested in personal knowledge management systems and note-taking apps. But what do these frameworks and methodologies actually give to researchers and the broader world? Has there been a meaningful increase of wisdom since these became popular? I went to look for an answer.
Botanical illustration of Capsicum annuum (chili pepper plant), showing two ripe red chili peppers hanging from a branching stem surrounded by dark green serrated leaves. The rendering is detailed and naturalistic in the style of a scientific watercolour plate, with the Latin species name handwritten in cursive at the bottom left.

SPICE: Our Antifragile Biology

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Spicy food and capsaicin demonstrate hormesis and antifragility in human biology. The science of pain, TRPV1 receptors, and how controlled exposure to stressors makes our bodies stronger rather than weaker.
A colorized historical photograph of an open-air hospital ward, likely from the 1918 influenza pandemic. Rows of metal-framed beds with white canopy curtains line a long covered porch with wooden floors and large windows overlooking trees. A nurse in a white uniform, cap, and face mask leans over a patient in the foreground; a second figure in white stands further down the ward. A small bedside table holds medical supplies.

The Hondius Pneumonia (Low Risk Assessment)

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A hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius in the South Atlantic has sent thirty passengers home across twenty-three countries before a single test was run. What does the WHO's 'low risk' framing mean? The institutional failure of January 2020, and what honest communication about uncertainty actually requires. The incubation window is open. We are watching.
A composite image juxtaposing a pastoral English countryside scene with a semi-transparent, glitch-filtered television news graphic. In the foreground, a flock of sheep and lambs graze on green grass near a large bare oak tree at golden hour. Behind them, overlaid with a CRT scan-line effect and chromatic aberration, is a Fox 13 Seattle news segment titled 'American Scientists Mysteriously Disappeared or Dead', a two-row timeline displaying photos, names, dates, and 'Deceased' or 'Missing' designations for twelve scientists, spanning July 2023 through February 2026.

PATTERN RECOGNITION

Scientists working in classified American aerospace and nuclear research have died and disappeared. The story has migrated from UFO forums to the White House briefing room. A conspiracy requires a conspirator. On grief, and the brain's furious, irrepressible need for meaning. Nuno Loureiro wanted to trap a small star. Carl Grillmair watched stellar streams from a self-built desert observatory. Monica Reza invented an alloy that does not burn. This is not me trying to figure anything out, this is me trying to remember the human beings.
Several playing cards fanned out face-up on a dark wood surface. Visible cards from left to right include the 8 of Hearts, 10 of Hearts, 10 of Clubs, 8 of Diamonds, 10 of Spades, 9 of Clubs, and 9 of Hearts. Prominently displayed near the center is a Joker card depicting a jester figure in a colorful blue, green, and gold costume with a red and black jester's cap, holding letter blocks. Additional Joker and number cards are partially visible beneath the spread. All cards bear the text '117 Anos — Cuidando de Você,' a branded Brazilian playing card deck.

Video Games that Secretly Teach Mathematics

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A love letter to the mathematics hiding inside video games, and a protest against the expression 'I'm just not a math person'. From parallel universes in Super Mario 64 to the technical exegetes mapping Animal Crossing, The Sims 2, Pokémon, and Paper Mario. Then Balatro and the IEEE 754 double-precision ceiling, tetration, Knuth's up-arrows, Conway chained arrows, Graham's number, TREE(3). A history of notation catching up to the infinite.
A red-haired girl sits propped up in bed, pale and fragile, her gaze directed slightly downward. Beside her, a dark-clothed figure bows their head low over the bed in a posture of grief or exhaustion, their face hidden. The bedclothes are rendered in muted greens and yellows; the background is a loose, agitated wash of greens, whites, and blues. The brushwork is expressionistic and urgent throughout. A glass and small vessels are visible on a bedside table to the right. The overall palette is heavy with dark blues, deep reds, and earthy tones, giving the scene an atmosphere of sorrow and vigil.

CLEAN AIR: Long COVID Is a Catastrophic Public Policy Failure

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A follow-up looking at the real, systemic intervention for the Long COVID mass-disabiling event: Clean air. MERV 13 filters, the Corsi-Rosenthal Box, and the Zadroga Act we still have to write to climb the bureaucratic wall of disability denial, and what those of us with capacity owe to those who are too sick to fight for themselves.
A photograph of Earth from deep space, slightly off-centre and partially in shadow, with a thin luminous blue atmospheric halo visible along the sunlit edge. Australia's arid interior is visible as a rust-coloured landmass on the left side. Swirling cloud systems cover much of the Pacific Ocean to the right. Stars are faintly visible in the black background, and a bright lens flare appears near the lower right.

That's Home. That's us.

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We have the first human photograph of Earth from space in 54 years, and I can't help but meditate on what it means to be human on a fragile planet in 2026.
A waxing gibbous moon photographed against a deep teal night sky, rising above a bank of soft cumulus clouds. The lunar surface is sharply detailed, with visible craters and maria. The clouds in the foreground are lit from below with a warm golden tone, contrasting with the cool blue of the sky.

THE MOON

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Born on April 13th, 26 years after Apollo 13's failure, I explore my personal connection to the Moon as Artemis II astronauts journey toward Her. The Moon has scientific importance, cultural naming traditions, religious significance across civilizations, linguistic ties to lunacy and menstruation, and is the first poem. The Moon unites humanity across time and space as we return to Her once again.
Expressionistic ink illustration of a distorted screaming face, rendered in blue and dark red brush strokes. The eyes bulge in opposite directions and the mouth gapes wide, showing teeth and tongue, while chaotic scribbles and paint marks surround the head, giving the image an intense, frantic energy.

Being a 21st Century Schizoid Man

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My personal exploration of schizoid personality disorder and neurodivergence. From King Crimson's prophetic song to global youth withdrawal phenomena, I examine what it means to live with a rich interior life and limited social needs, challenging pathologizing frameworks and questioning whether 'poor outcomes' are about the condition or the metrics.
A 19th-century-style anatomical diagram of the human brain in lateral cross-section, rendered in fine engraving style with black-and-white linework. The brain's gyri (folds) and sulci (grooves) are depicted in detail, with numbers (1–10) and lowercase letters (a–g) labeling specific lobes, fissures, and structures including what appear to be the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, brainstem, and ventricular regions. The image has been digitally processed with a chromatic aberration effect, creating rainbow colour fringing (cyan, magenta, yellow, green) around all edges and a horizontal scan-line pattern across the image.

STORYTELLING Part One: The Neurology of Narrative

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How do our brains physically process stories? The neurology of narrative transportation, brain synchrony between storytellers and listeners, biocultural theory, and Indigenous storytelling traditions that collapse Western narrative structures.
Mounds of sea foam pile up on a wet sandy beach at golden hour, glowing warm amber and white where sunlight catches their peaks. Shallow water reflects the purple-blue sky behind them, and rolling waves break in the background beneath a partly cloudy horizon.

Fermenting Boredom

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Come be bored with me. Utterly bored. Within the default mode network, Heidegger's philosophy, Indigenous dream epistemologies, and personal experiences with hypnagogic states.
A healthcare worker in full protective equipment, including a blue gown, surgical cap, face mask, and gloves, sits exhausted on the floor of a hospital hallway, leaning against a medical cart. The corridor stretches behind them with empty gurneys and medical equipment visible along the pale walls under fluorescent lighting, conveying the physical and emotional toll of frontline medical work.

The Pandemic Never Ended. We Only Pretend it Did

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Six years into COVID-19, the world has moved on while the virus continues to disable millions. An examination of the ongoing pandemic, long COVID, and our collective failure to prevent a mass disabling event.
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