Dan Falk

Joined: Dec 17, 2015

Dan Falk is a science journalist based in Toronto. His books include The Science of Shakespeare and In Search of Time.

Galileo Galilei in an oil painting by an Italian painter, 18th (?) century.

15 Fascinating Facts About Galileo

Earth as captured from near the lunar horizon by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2015.

The Science Behind Why the Earth Isn't Flat

What Is a Scientific Theory?

How Real-Life Science Inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Why Your Christmas Lights Always Get Tangled, According to Science

We turned to mathematicians, physicists, and engineers to find out why the lights are so frustrating—and how to improve them.

NSF/LIGO/Sonoma State University/A. Simonnet

Astronomers Observe a New Kind of Massive Cosmic Collision for the First Time

"For me, it feels like the dawning of a next era in astrophysics."

An illustration showing the merger of two black holes and the gravitational waves that ripple outward as the black holes spiral toward each other.

5 Things We Know About Gravitational Waves—And 2 That Are a Mystery

Astronomers once again detected ripples in the fabric of space-time.

The center of the Milky Way galaxy, with the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*, located in the middle, as captured in x-ray and infrared in this 2013 NASA photo.

Astronomers Will Soon Have the First-Ever Picture of a Black Hole

“We might see a crescent, brightened on one side—or a bipolar, jet-like structure. We honestly don’t know.”

FAECIASP/NASA/Conicet of Argentina/Getty Images

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Black Holes

They’re probably the weirdest—and certainly the most puzzling—objects in the universe. Peer over the event horizon with us.

The Top 10 Science Stories of 2016

It's been a big year.

Have We Detected Hundreds of Signals From Extraterrestrial Life?

The astronomical community is reacting with measured skepticism to a new paper making bold claims.

15 Swinging Facts About Léon Foucault (and His Pendulum)

7. He was chummy with Napoleon III.

Astronomers Discover Milky Way–Sized Galaxy That's 99.99% Dark Matter

A mere 100th of 1 percent of the galaxy Dragonfly 44 is made up of ordinary matter.

Physicists Believe They've Discovered a Fifth Fundamental Force of the Universe

If the discovery holds up, it will radically shake up what we know about the workings of the universe.

The Buckminster Fuller Institute/Facebook

15 Geodesic Facts About Buckminster Fuller

Born on this day in 1895, Bucky had an enormous impact that is still felt today.

Scientists Set to Model the Universe With 'Full' Theory of General Relativity

If you want to calculate how gravity shapes the universe, then Einstein’s got the equations for you—he set them down 100 years ago in his masterpiece, the general theory of relativity. But there’s a catch: Those equations are notoriously difficult to solv