As they are usually understood, the designations "nuclear wasteland" and "pure wilderness" are opposites; when they converge into nature reserves on the sites of contaminated lands we often describe this circumstance as "paradoxical" or "ironic." Taking stock of plans to handle lands that will remain saturated with radionuclides for tens of thousands of years, I argue that the categories of wastelands and wilderness are far from dichotomous; that that their relation is more intriguing (and disturbing) than a binary of purity and corruption. As we create scenarios for the far distant future of these lands, we have been forced to reconsider the nature of memory, cultural continuity, fiction and non-fiction, and even the relation of the human to nature.
As they are usually understood, the designations "nuclear wasteland" and "pure wilderness" are opposites; when they converge into nature reserves on the sites of contaminated lands we often describe this circumstance as "paradoxical" or "ironic." Taking stock of plans to handle lands that will remain saturated with radionuclides for tens of thousands of years, I argue that the categories of wastelands and wilderness are far from dichotomous; that that their relation is more intriguing (and disturbing) than a binary of purity and corruption. As we create scenarios for the far distant future of these lands, we have been forced to reconsider the nature of memory, cultural continuity, fiction and non-fiction, and even the relation of the human to nature.
Around the horizon of a black hole, an edge of the universe, light is captured, spun into orbit by the black hole’s powerful gravitational pull. Lying within the orange donut in the famous first image of a black hole, this “photon ring” would be a prize...
My world was jolted by two shadow images: one, thrilling, the other terrifying. After a years-long effort—with 200 other scientists—we made the first image of a black hole, its shadow of no return. Then I fell into debilitating pain. A deadly shadow...
1930, Madras, India. On a steamship to England, 19-year-old Indian physics prodigy, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar makes a paradigm-shattering discovery about the life cycle of stars: a discipline pioneered by Sir Arthur Eddington, the world’s most famous...
