Today's Liberal News

Alan Lightman

When the Unnatural Becomes Natural

                           Foul whisperings are abroad: unnatural deeds                            Do breed unnatural troubles … — MacbethSome years ago, the satellite radio and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt decided that she wanted a semblance of her wife to last forever.

This Is No Way to Be Human

Recently I met the astronomer Pascal Oesch, an assistant professor at the University of Geneva. Professor Oesch and his colleagues share the distinction of having discovered the most distant known object, a small galaxy called GNz-11. That galaxy is so far away that its light had to travel for 13 billion years to get from there to here. I asked Professor Oesch if he felt personally connected to this tiny smudge on his computer screen.