Timothy Ferris - Articles & Essays

Articles & Essays

• "Timothy Ferris on Voyagers' Never-Ending Journey," Smithsonian Magazine, May 2012.
• “Sun Struck,” - A piece on the solar storms(solar flares) National Geographic, June 2012.
• “Dancing in the Dark,” National Geographic, December 2011.
• “The World of the Intellectual vs. The World of the Engineer,” Wired.com, October 13, 2011.
• “Why I Write: Timothy Ferris on Writing to Learn,” National Writing Project (http://www.nwp.org) September 23, 2011.
• "An Experiment in Reason: True Liberalism is a proposition, not a dogma," Oxford American, Issue 70, 2010.
• "Worlds Apart: Seeking New Earths", National Geographic, December 2009, pg 78.
• “Raising Heaven,” National Geographic, November 2007.
• “Seeing in the Dark,” HighDef magazine, Sept/Oct 2007.
• “Mix Tape of the Gods,” The New York Times Op-Ed page, September 5, 2007.
• Liner notes for the music album “Private Investigations - The Very Best of Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler”, November 2005.
• “Sedan Delivery,” Automobile, July 2005.
• Foreword to Michelle Feynman, ed., Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
• “C6 Appeal,” Automobile, September 2004.
• “The Waiting Game,” Automobile, April 2004.
• Forward to Field Guide for Science Writers, 2004.
• Forward to Hunter S. Thompson’s Kingdom of Fear. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.
• “A New Pathway to the Stars,” The New York Times Op-Ed page, Sunday, December 21, 2003; reprinted in the International Herald Tribune and the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
• “The Wonder of Seeing Red,” Los Angeles Times Opinion page, August 24, 2003.
• “’Taken’ Off,” Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 2003.
• “At Dawn, the Columbia,” The New York Times Op-Ed page, February 3, 2003, and other newspapers.
• “The Whole Shebang: How Science Produced the Big Bang Model,” from The Whole Shebang, American Educator, Fall 2002.
• “Killer Rocks From Outer Space,” adapted from Seeing in the Dark, Reader’s Digest, October 2002.
• “Voyager: A Message From Earth,” The Planetary Report, September/October 2002.
• “Astronomy’s New Stars,” from Seeing in the Dark, Smithsonian, September 2002; reprinted in The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2003.
• “On Science Writing,” Physics in Perspective, vol. 4 (2002) 1, 3-12, February 2002.
• Foreword to James Trefil and Margaret Hindle Hazen, Good Seeing: A Century of Science at the Carnegie Institution of Washington 1902-2002. Washington, Joseph Henry Press, 2002.
• “Infinite Loop,” Yahoo Internet Life, September 2001.
• Introduction to Celestial Nights: Visions of an Ancient Land, by Neil Folberg. New York, Aperture, 2001.
• “Snafu Snared, Scientists Say,” ScienceWriters, Spring 2001.
• “Concerning John Archibald Wheeler,” Contentville.com, February 2001.
• “Reforming Voting Machine Technology,” Contentville.com, January 2001.
• “Five Gs and a 125-Pound Head,” Men’s Journal, January 2001.
• “Stars and Pyramids,” Contentville.com, December 2000.
• “Bush and Gore on Science and Technology,” Contentville.com, October 2000.
• “Many Questions, Some Answers,” Forbes ASAP, October 2, 2000.
• “Faster Than a Speeding Unser,” Men’s Journal, September 2000.
• Contributions to “What Are the Grand Questions of Science?” and “What Are the Next Breakthroughs in Science?” in Robert Lawrence Kuhn, editor, Closer to Truth. New York: McGraw Hill, 2000.
• “The Sinking of the Kursk,” Contentville.com, September 1, 2000.
• “Precious Metal,” Automobile, September 2000.
• “Switching the Light Fantastic,” Forbes ASAP, August 21, 2000.
• “Where Are They?” Contentville.com, August 1, 2000.
• “On Stargazing,” Contentville.com, July 25, 2000.
• “How Will the Universe End? Time, April 10, 2000.
• The Light and the Dark, Automobile, March 2000.
• A Space Station? The New York Times Magazine, November 28, 1999. Reprinted in MAX Magazine, Germany, 1999.
• If Forced to Choose, American Scientist, November–December 1999.
• The Cruel Sport, Talk, November 1999.
• The Last Bit: Is Information Theory the Answer to Everything? Forbes ASAP Big Issue IV, October 4, 1999.
• Personal Places, National Geographic Traveler, October 1999.
• How to Predict Everything, The New Yorker, July 12, 1999.
• Introduction to The Scientific American Book of Astronomy, The Lyons Press, 1999.
• Whine of the Region: If You Want to Know Why a Ferrari is a Ferrari, Just Drive One in its Homeland, Automobile, July 1999.
• Interstellar Spaceflight, Scientific American Presents: The Future of Space Exploration, Spring 1999.
• Communication With High-Performance Automobiles, Wired, January 1999.
• NASA’s Mission to Nowhere, Op-ed page, The New York Times, Sunday, November 29, 1998.
• The Three Immensities, Forbes ASAP Big Issue III, November 30, 1998.
• Seeing in the Dark, The New Yorker, August 10, 1998.
• Not Rocket Science, The New Yorker, July 20, 1998.
• Flight of the Bumblers, Op-ed page, The New York Times, September 24, 1997.
• The Space Gamble, The New York Review of Books, September 25, 1997; reprinted in Le Recherche, Paris, November 1997.
• Inflating the Cosmos, Astronomy, July 1997.
• The Wrong Stuff, The New Yorker, April 14, 1997.
• The Risks and Rewards of Popularizing Science, The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 4, 1997; reprinted in The Informal Science Review, May/June 1997.
• The Moon's Big Splash, Natural History, March 1997.
• Is This the End? The New Yorker, January 27, 1997; reprinted in Germany and Australia and in McGraw-Hill=s Quantitative Reasoning Workbook., 1997.
• Weirdness Makes Sense, The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 29, 1996.
• A Message From Mars, The New Yorker, August 19, 1996.
• Express Train of the Sky, Op-Ed page, San Francisco Examiner and other newspapers, June 4, 1996.
• Foreword, Robert P. Crease and Charles C. Mann, The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics, Rutgers University Press, 1996.
• Alien Ambition, The New Yorker, February 12, 1996.
• Apollo 13 and the Strip-Mining of American Culture, Newsday, July 11, 1995; reprinted in the Washington Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Phoenix Gazette, other papers.
• At the Cosmological Conference, The New Yorker, May 15, 1995.
• The Interpreter, lead essay in Ted Anton and Rick McCourt, editors, The New Science Journalists: The Future of Our Planet, Our Species, and Our Psyches, From the Most Renowned Literary Science Journalists Working Today, New York, Ballantine, 1995.
• Science and Genesis, chapter in Clifford N. Matthews and Roy Abraham Varghese, editors, Cosmic Beginnings and Human Ends: Where Science and Religion Meet, Chicago, Open Court, 1995.
• "Earthbound," The New Yorker, August 1, 1994.
• "Ayrton Senna's Intense, Deadly World," San Francisco Examiner Op-Ed page, Sunday, May 15, 1994.
• "Seeing Stars," The New Yorker, January 31, 1994.
• "Evolution of Interstellar Communications Systems," chapter in Bang: The Evolving Cosmos: Nobel Conference XXVII, Richard Fuller, editor, University Press of America, 1994.
• "The Future is Coming," The New York Times Op-Ed page, November 12, 1993.
• "Babbling Brooks and Talking Dogs," The New York Times Op-Ed page, June 8, 1993; reprinted in the San Jose Mercury News and other newspapers.
• "Life, the Universe and Me," The Times, London, February 20, 1993.
• "When Science is the Star," The New York Times, Arts & Leisure section, Sunday, August 16, 1992.
• "Total," The New Yorker, July 29, 1991.
• "The Space Telescope: A Sign of Intelligent Life," The New York Times, Week in Review section, front page, Sunday, April 29, 1990.
• "Zen and R. H. Blyth," The Nation, April 30, 1990.
• "Grand Unification Theories," in Holcomb B. Noble, editor, Next: The Coming Era in Science, Boston, Little, Brown, 1988.
• "Where Are We Going? Notes on the Absolute Motion of the Solar System Through Space." Sky & Telescope, May, 1987.
• "The Year of the Red Lights: Challenger, Chernobyl, the Titanic, and 'Star Wars,'" Life, January 1987.
• "Albert Einstein's Annus Mirabilis," Science 84 fifth anniversary issue, November 1984; reprinted in Annual Edition: Western Civilization, Vol. 2, 1985.
• "Mind Over Matter: The Singular Stephen Hawking," Vanity Fair, June 1984; reprinted in The Journalist, March, 1985.
• "The Other Einstein," Science 83, October 1983; reprinted in A Passion to Know, Allen L. Hammond, editor, New York, Scribner's, 1984.
• "Beyond Newton and Einstein: On the Frontiers of Physics," The New York Times Magazine, September 26, 1982.
• "The Perfect Circle," Science Digest, July 1981.
• "A Conversation With Lewis Thomas," Smithsonian, April 1980.
• "Navigators Who Probe the Mysteries of Deep Space," The New York Times Magazine, April l, 1979; reprinted in Science of the Times 3, New York, Arno Press, 1979.
• "Crucibles of the Cosmos," The New York Times Magazine, January 14, 1979; New York Times Syndicate, 1979; reprinted in Readers' Digest, May 1979; Science of the Times 3, 1979; The Living World of Nature, Readers' Digest Press, 1980.
• "Seeking an End to Cosmic Loneliness," The New York Times Magazine, October 23, 1977; reprinted in Science of the Times 2, 1979.
• "The Odyssey and the Ecstasy: The Viking's Search for Life on Mars," Rolling Stone, April 7, 1977; reprinted in Rolling Stone: The 70s, Little, Brown, 1998.
• "The Universe as an Ocean of Thought," Harper's, July 1975.
• "All That Glitters is not God," Rolling Stone, January 30, 1975; reprinted in Paul Scanlon, editor, Reporting: The Rolling Stone Style, New York, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1977.
• Interview with Erich von Daniken, Playboy, August 1974.
• "Raquel Welch Speaks Her Mind," Rolling Stone, August 29, 1974.
• "Where Does it all End? A Debate About the Edge of the Universe," Harper's, June 1974.
• "A Special Report: Is the Free Press In Danger?" Rolling Stone, April 26, 1973.
• "How Do We Know Where We Are If We've Never Been Anywhere Else? Cosmological Perspectives," Rolling Stone, March 15, 1973.
• "A Conversation With Carl Sagan," Rolling Stone, June 7, 1973; reprinted in Tom Head, ed., Conversations With Carl Sagan, 2006.
• " David Brinkley vs. Woeful Ignorance," Rolling Stone, September 14, 1972.
• "Hometown Folks: Letters from American Political Prisoners," Rolling Stone, March 16, 1972; The Rolling Stone Reader, New York, Warner Library, 1974.
• “Robert Johnson,” Rolling Stone, February 4, 1971.
• “An Evening With Muhammad Ali,” New York Post, March 22, 1971.
• "Turning Off the Sun," New York Post Magazine, March 7, 1970.
• "Mars: Can It Sustain Life?" New York Post Magazine, July 23, 1969.