Robert Krulwich

I'll be back with more on the blog at the end of March.

It looks kinda like a squirrel, except its ears are too small, its tail is ratty, then bushy, and its mouth? Definitely un-squirrel. More like a shrew, a fox, or a dog. And the teeth? Strange. What is it?

It's an act of edited, elegant imagination.

Drawn by science illustrator ...

Sandy Island, located in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Australia, occupies about about 45 square miles of the Coral Sea. It was documented in 1772 and appeared on a 1908 admira...

You can see it on this Google Map — a little spit of land, sitting between Australia (on the left) and French-governed New Caledonia (on the right).

It's called "Sandy Island." In the Times Atlas of the World it's called "Sable Island." On both maps it's a conspicuous land mass, ...

Today is March 14, or "3/14," the first three digits of Pi. It's a day celebrated around the (geek) world as "Pi Day." So here's the pie version of Pi, the down, dirty and baked goo...

Today is March 14, or "3/14," the first three digits of Pi. It's a day celebrated around the (geek) world as "Pi Day." Pi, of course, is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle. It was first recorded by Archimedes, but you can replicate his discovery ...

Here are some of the things Reza Farazmand knows. He knows how we dream.

He knows how we hurt ...

He knows how little we know.

And, in his sly way, he knows about imagination ...

He is the young author of a thrice-weekly 'toon called Poorly Drawn Lines, ...

Human history (the written-down part) began about 7,000 years ago. Here's everything we've learned in all that time, compressed into five words, spoken by a puzzled human — from a w...

What are you doing this weekend? Bet you're not using scraps from an old Toshiba TV to melt stacks of metal coins into steaming-hot foam. No? I thought not. (But we are.)

Aatish, a guy I follow on Twitter, tosses this stuff off like it's no biggie, but that's because he's a physics grad student. He knows things I don't know. And because I don't know them, what he finds mildly amusing makes me gasp. Really.

Here's an example. He mentions ...

It's already happened. We humans have already met an intelligent alien. Not only that, we almost certainly had sex with them. And we did here, right here on Earth, not so many generat...

We have dreamed about it for so long. We've told stories, made movies, imagined what it would be like when we humans have our first "close encounter" with an intelligent alien, a creature about our size, who can gaze back, talk (even if we can't understand what's being said) who ...

Neil deGrasse Tyson is stepping up his game, roaring, cajoling, stomping his big, considerable, eloquent self to say we have got to, got to, GOT TO, step off this planet and go places, back to the moon, on to Mars, that we can't afford not to, that if we don't, ...

What happened to the future? In the '60s and '70s, says astrophysicist Neil Tyson, kids thought about going to space, exploring; tomorrow seemed so, so near. But no longer. Our worl...

Before we get to today's topic (flower blooming), let's take a Sloth Break. I know this isn't usual, but hey, I think everybody should see this adorable baby sloth named Matty giving his human caretaker, Claire, a flower. If you've already seen it, jump ahead to my essay. But if ...

Mums bloom in the fall, daffodils in spring, roses in summer. How do farmers get such different plants to bloom simultaneously in Winter for Valentine's Day? It's done, strangely, w...

My pal Erik Olsen at The New York Times has just described an extraordinary new way to look at people. You point a camera at someone, record the image and then, using an "amplifier," you can discover things you've never seen before.

Originally designed to look (but not touch) ...

A new video technology that amplifies small color changes and slight movements can, when pointed at people, tell what's going on inside.

Banishments are much more complicated than they used to be. And this "Minute Physics" video suggests, paradoxically, that both you and the person you banish are somehow simultaneously...

If DNA molecules are the Marilyn Monroes of biochemistry — everybody knows what DNA looks like — what about proteins? Why do most people have no idea what a protein looks like? Well...