New Article: Nuclear Films Reveal Blast Details 60 Years Later

My new story for scientificamerican.com looks at an ongoing project to find, scan, analyze and declassify thousands of films depicting America’s nuclear weapons tests from the 1950s and early 1960s. Atmospheric testing was banned in 1963, and since then, physicists have had to design computer simulations to “test” the efficacy of weapons in the current U.S. stockpile. …

New Article: Bird Ancestors Built Nests Like Defensive Forts

My story in the May 2017 issue of Scientific American explores the evolution of bird nest shape. Most researchers believed that the common cup style, like the kind robins build under your porch eaves, evolved first, followed by the more complex and time-consuming roofed style. But one team of scientists has found that it happened the …

New Article: How the Great Ocean Liners Gave Us Luxury Cruise Ships

I’m excited to publish my first feature for the BBC, “The Monster Ships That Changed Travel,” revealing how the biggest transatlantic liners of all time gave rise to today’s colossal cruise ships. I did a deep dive into century-old engine technology, corporate competition between Cunard, White Star and the European lines; the onboard perks enjoyed by …