FUTURE US - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Staff Writer, E - Commerce (
Alex Cox joined Space.com in June 2021 as staff writer covering space news, games, tech, toys and deals. He is based in London, U.K. Graduating in June 2020, Alex studied Sports Journalism in the North East of England at Sunderland University. During his studies and since his graduation, Alex has been featured in local newspapers and online publications covering a range of sports from university rugby to Premier League soccer.
In addition to a background in sports and journalism, Alex has a life-long love of Star Wars which started with watching the prequel trilogy and collecting toy lightsabers, he also grew up spending most Saturday evenings watching Doctor Who.
Job Titles:
- Editor
- Science and Technology Journalist
Brett Tingley is a science and technology journalist who is curious about emerging concepts in spaceflight, aerospace, and robotics. Brett's work has appeared on The War Zone at TheDrive.com, Popular Science, the History Channel, Science Discovery, and more. Brett obtained a Bachelor's degree in English from Clemson University and a Master's degree in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In his free time, Brett is a working musician, a hobbyist electronics engineer and cosplayer, an avid LEGO fan, and enjoys hiking and camping throughout the Appalachian Mountains with his wife and two children.
Clara Moskowitz is a science and space writer who joined the Space.com team in 2008 and served as Assistant Managing Editor from 2011 to 2013. Clara has a bachelor's degree in astronomy and physics from Wesleyan University, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She covers everything from astronomy to human spaceflight and once aced a NASTAR suborbital spaceflight training program for space missions. Clara is currently Associate Editor of Scientific American. To see her latest project is, follow Clara on Twitter.
Daisy Dobrijevic joined Space.com in February 2022 as a reference writer having previously worked for our sister publication All About Space magazine as a staff writer. Before joining us, Daisy completed an editorial internship with the BBC Sky at Night Magazine and worked at the National Space Centre in Leicester, U.K., where she enjoyed communicating space science to the public. In 2021, Daisy completed a PhD in plant physiology and also holds a Master's in Environmental Science, she is currently based in Nottingham, U.K.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of History at Swansea University
Dr Adam Mosley is an Associate Professor of History at Swansea University. He is the author of Bearing the Heavens: Tycho Brahe and the Astronomical Community of the Late Sixteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
Elizabeth Howell, Ph.D., is a staff writer in the spaceflight channel since 2022. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years before that, since 2012. As a proud Trekkie and Canadian, she also tackles topics like diversity, science fiction, astronomy and gaming to help others explore the universe. Elizabeth's on-site reporting includes two human spaceflight launches from Kazakhstan, three space shuttle missions in Florida, and embedded reporting from a simulated Mars mission in Utah. She holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Space Studies from the University of North Dakota, and a Bachelor of Journalism from Canada's Carleton University. Elizabeth is also a post-secondary instructor in communications and science since 2015. Her latest book, Leadership Moments from NASA, is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams. Elizabeth first got interested in space after watching the movie Apollo 13 in 1996, and still wants to be an astronaut someday.
Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., is a staff writer in the spaceflight channel since 2022 covering diversity, education and gaming as well. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years before joining full-time. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House and Office of the Vice-President of the United States, an exclusive conversation with aspiring space tourist (and NSYNC bassist) Lance Bass, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, "Why Am I Taller?", is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams. Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Space Studies from the University of North Dakota, a Bachelor of Journalism from Canada's Carleton University and a Bachelor of History from Canada's Athabasca University. Elizabeth is also a post-secondary instructor in communications and science at several institutions since 2015; her experience includes developing and teaching an astronomy course at Canada's Algonquin College (with Indigenous content as well) to more than 1,000 students since 2020. Elizabeth first got interested in space after watching the movie Apollo 13 in 1996, and still wants to be an astronaut someday. Mastodon: https://qoto.org/@howellspace
Job Titles:
- Staff Writer at All about History
Emily is the Staff Writer at All About History magazine, writing and researching for the magazine's content. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from the University of York and a Master of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Sheffield. Her historical interests include Early Modern and Renaissance Europe, and the history of popular culture.
Jase Parnell-Brookes is an award-winning photographer, educator and writer based in the UK. He won the Gold Prize award in the Nikon Photo Contest 2018/19, and was named Digital Photographer of the Year in 2014.
Job Titles:
- Cameras & Skywatching Channel Editor
Job Titles:
- Professor Emeritus of History at Luther College, Decorah, Iowa
John Robert Christianson is Professor Emeritus of History at Luther College, Decorah, Iowa. He is the author of On Tycho's Island (Cambridge University Press, 2000) and Tycho Brahe and the Measure of the Heavens (Reaktion Books, 2020).
Job Titles:
- Space.Com in 2010 As a Senior Writer Reporting
Michael Wall joined Space.com in 2010 as a senior writer reporting on Mars exploration, exoplanet discoveries, astrophysics and space technology. For Space.com, Mike has wandered through California's Mojave Desert with scientists on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity mission and helped launch balloon missions through Earth's auroras in Alaska. He's based in San Francisco, where he chronicles the space tech revolution in Silicon Valley.
Prior to joining Space.com, Mike was a science writer for the Idaho National Laboratory and interned with Wired.com, The Salinas Californian newspaper and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Mike has also worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Nola Taylor Tillman is a contributing writer for Space.com. She loves all things space and astronomy-related, and enjoys the opportunity to learn more. She has a Bachelor's degree in English and Astrophysics from Agnes Scott college and served as an intern at Sky & Telescope magazine. In her free time, she homeschools her four children. Follow her on Twitter at @NolaTRedd
Percival Lawrence Lowell was born on March 13, 1855, to a prominent, wealthy Bostonian family. Son of Augustus and Katherine Bigelow Lowell, young Percival attended Harvard University and graduated in 1876 with a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics. At his graduation, he gave a speech on the formation of the solar system that indicated his early interest in astronomy. (His brother, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, later became president of Harvard.)
American astronomer Percival Lowell, after whom the Lowell Observatory is named. (Image credit: Library of Congress)
After college, Lowell worked in his family's textile business. In 1882, a lecture on Japan inspired him to travel to the Far East. He served as a foreign secretary to the Korean Special Mission, part of the first Korean diplomatic mission, in 1883. He wrote a number of books on the Far East.
In 1908, Lowell married Constance Savage Keith. They had no children.
Job Titles:
- Senior Writer
- Science Journalist
Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science.
He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.'s Open University. Follow him on Twitter @sciencef1rst.
Job Titles:
- S Apple
- S Inventions and Discoveries
Isaac Newton was born on Christmas Day to a poor farming family in Woolsthorpe, England, in 1642. At the time of Newton's birth England used the Julian calendar, however, when England adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, his birthday became 4th January 1643.
Isaac Newton arrived in the world only a few months after his father, Isaac Newton Sr, had died. "The boy expected to live managing the farm in the place of the father he had never known," wrote James Gleick in "Isaac Newton" (Vintage, 2004).
However, when it became clear a farming life was not for him, Newton attended Trinity College in Cambridge, England. "He did not know what he wanted to be or do, but it was not tend sheep or follow the plough and the dung cart," wrote Gleick. While there, he took an interest in mathematics, optics, physics, and astronomy.
After his graduation, he began to teach at the college and was appointed as the second Lucasian Chair there. Today, the chair is considered the most renowned academic chair in the world, held by the likes of Charles Babbage and Stephen Hawking.
In 1689, Newton was elected as a member of parliament for the university. In 1703, he was elected as president of the Royal Society, a fellowship of scientists that still exists today. He was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705. He never married.
What are Isaac Newton's laws of motion?
Newton's most famous work came with the publication of his "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), generally called Principia. In it, he determined the three laws of motion for the universe.
Newton's first law describes how objects move at the same velocity unless an outside force acts upon them. (A force is something that causes or changes motion.) Thus, an object sitting on a table remains on the table until a force - the push of a hand, or gravity - acts upon it. Similarly, an object travels at the same speed unless it interacts with another force, such as friction.
His second law of motion provided a calculation for how forces interact. The law states that a force is equal to the change in the momentum (mass multiplied by velocity) per change in time. Therefore, when more force is applied to an object, its acceleration also increases, but when the mass of the object increases and the force remains constant, its acceleration decreases.
Newton's third law states that for every action in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If one body applies a force on a second, then the second body exerts a force of the same strength on the first, in the opposite direction.
From all of this, Newton calculated the universal law of gravitation. He found that as two bodies move farther away from one another, the gravitational attraction between them decreases by the inverse of the square of the distance. Thus, if the objects are twice as far apart, the gravitational force is only a fourth as strong; if they are three times as far apart, it is only a ninth of its previous power.
The story of Isaac Newton and the apple tree may well be a self-created myth, but it might have helped his audience understand some of the concepts he was explaining. (Image credit: Photos.com via Getty Images)
A popular myth tells of an apple falling from a tree in Newton's garden, which brought Newton to an understanding of forces, particularly gravity. Whether the incident actually happened is unknown, but historians doubt the event - if it occurred - was the driving force in Newton's thought process.
The myth tells of Isaac Newton having returned to his family farm in Woolsthorpe, escaping Cambridge for a short time as it was dealing with a plague outbreak. As he sat in the farm's orchard, an apple fell from one of the trees (in some tellings it hit Newton on the head). Watching this happen, Newton began to consider the forces that meant the apple always fell directly towards the ground, beginning his examination of gravity.
One of the reasons that this story gained a foothold in popular understanding is that it is an anecdote Newton himself seems to have shared. "Toward the end of his life, Newton told the apple anecdote around four times, although it only became well known in the nineteenth century," wrote Patricia Fara, a historian of science at the University of Cambridge, in a chapter of "Newton's Apple and Other Myths about Science" (Harvard University Press, 2020).
Newton worked on a number of different theories and proofs, here depicted working on refracting light through a prism. (Image credit: Apic / Contributor via Getty Images)
Stephen Hawking is regarded as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history.
His work on the origins and structure of the universe, from the Big Bang to black holes, revolutionized the field, while his best-selling books have appealed to readers who may not have Hawking's scientific background. Hawking died on March 14, 2018, at the age of 76.
Stephen Hawking was seen by many as the world's smartest person, though he never revealed his IQ score. When asked about his IQ score by a New York Times reporter he replied, "I have no idea, people who boast about their IQ are losers," according to the news site The Atlantic.
Throughout his career, Hawking proposed several theories regarding astronomical anomalies, posed curious questions about the cosmos and enlightened the world about the origin of everything. Here are just some of the many milestones Hawking made in the name of science.
In 1970, Hawkings and fellow physicist and Oxford classmate, Roger Penrose, published a joint paper entitled "The singularities of gravitational collapse and cosmology". In this paper, Hawking and Penrose proposed a new theory of spacetime singularities - a breakdown in the fabric of the universe found in one of Hawking's later discoveries, the black hole. This early work not only challenged concepts in physics but also supported the concept of the Big Bang as the birth of the universe, as outlined in Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity in the 1940s.
Over the course of his career, Hawking studied the basic laws governing the universe. In 1974, Hawking published another paper called "Black hole explosions?", in which he outlined a theorem that united Einstein's theory of general relativity, with quantum theory - which explains the behavior of matter and energy on an atomic level. In this new paper, Hawking hypothesized that matter not only fell into the gravitational pull of black holes but that photons radiated from them - which has now been confirmed in laboratory experiments by the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Israel - aptly named "Hawking radiation".
Hawking has made several television appearances, including a playing hologram of himself on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and a cameo on the television show "Big Bang Theory." He has also voiced himself in several episodes of the animated series "Futurama" and "The Simpson". In 1997, PBS also presented an educational miniseries titled "Stephen Hawking's Universe," which probes the theories of the cosmologist.
In 2014, a movie based on Hawking's life was released. Called "The Theory of Everything," the film drew praise from Hawking, who said it made him reflect on his own life. "Although I'm severely disabled, I have been successful in my scientific work," Hawking wrote on Facebook in November 2014. "I travel widely and have been to Antarctica and Easter Island, down in a submarine and up on a zero-gravity flight. One day, I hope to go into space."
"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," he told the BBC in 2014. Hawking added, however, that AI developed to date has been helpful. It's more the self-replication potential that worries him. "It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded."
"The genie is out of the bottle. I fear that AI may replace humans altogether," Hawking told WIRED in November 2017.
Since 2007, Steven Spaleta has produced and edited space, science and entertainment-related videos for Space.com and Live Science; preceded by a decade of video, audio and live stage production for Pal Television East, Inc.
Job Titles:
- Editor - in - Chief
- Editor - in - Chief of Space.Com
Tariq is the Editor-in-Chief of Space.com and joined the team in 2001, first as an intern and staff writer, and later as an editor. He covers human spaceflight, exploration and space science, as well as skywatching and entertainment. He became Space.com's Managing Editor in 2009 and Editor-in-Chief in 2019. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times covering education and city beats in La Habra, Fullerton and Huntington Beach. In October 2022, Tariq received the Harry Kolcum Award for excellence in space reporting from the National Space Club Florida Committee. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. You can find Tariq at Space.com and as the co-host to the This Week In Space podcast with space historian Rod Pyle on the TWiT network. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Twitter @tariqjmalik.
Astronomer Vera Rubin changed the way we think of the universe by showing that galaxies are mostly dark matter.
On a dry and clear night at the Kitt Peak Observatory in the mountains of southern Arizona, Rubin closely observed the spectra of stars in the Andromeda Galaxy to determine their velocities. Conditions for observation were perfect, if not for the heat rising from the Sonoran Desert below. Rubin alternated between eating ice cream cones and developing exposures just taken by her colleague, Kent Ford, in the observation deck. It was their first successful night determining how fast the galaxy's stars rotate around its center (what astronomers call the rotation curve). It was 1968, and the motions of galaxies were still a mystery.
"The surprises came very quickly," Rubin recalled years later in a written account of her life. "By the end of the first night, we were puzzled by the shape of the rotation curve."
Rubin's affinity to astronomy began at a young age. She was born on July 23, 1928, from two Jewish immigrant parents who encouraged Rubin's scientific interests from the start. Her father helped her build a cardboard telescope, which she used to photograph the motion of stars. Her mother persuaded the librarian to let Rubin checkout science books from the adult section of the local library. But it was mostly Rubin's undying curiosity that drove her.
At Georgetown, she had to balance family and research. With one child to take care of and another on the way, she began her doctoral studies by taking classes at night. Her husband, Robert Rubin, would drive her to the university, waiting in the car as she studied.
Years later, she would become the first woman allowed to observe at the famed Palomar Observatory - the same observatory Fritz Zwicky used to observe the Coma Cluster. Seeing that the only bathroom in the observatory was labeled 'MEN', she drew a skirted-woman and pasted it over the door.
Rubin's research during her early career was largely unaccepted by her colleagues. Her master's thesis on the large-scale motions of galaxies was controversial. Her doctoral thesis was largely ignored.
Wanting to avoid more competitive or contentious research areas, Rubin began researching the rotation of galaxies. This led Rubin to a permanent position at the Carnegie Institution in Washington D.C., where she met and teamed up with Kent Ford.
Rubin continued her research unveiling the presence of dark matter in numerous galaxies during the remainder of her career. The growing amount of evidence from her research would make the case for dark matter undeniable.