Earth Sciences

What have Astronomy, Photography, Engineering and Horticulture got in common ? Obviously they are branches of the sciences, but there is a less obvious link, a family and their home in almost the exact centre of Ireland.
A few clues, between 1845 and 1915, the world's largest telescope, the invention of the steam turbine in 1884 and the world's first steam turbine powered ship in 1897.
The castle and estate at Birr, Co. Offaly in Ireland, has been owned by the Parsons family for over 300 years. In this time, Birr castle demense has seen a host of scientific and technological achievement, much of which has changed the world. To help preserve this heritage for future generations, the ``Birr Scientific and Heritage Foundation'' was formed.

In accordance with the mandate to study the "Transformation of Canada," the collection of the Canada Science and Technology Museum encompasses a broad cross-section of Canadian scientific and technological heritage. National in scope, this unique collection consists of artifacts, photographs, technical drawings, trade literature, and rare books, all of which are complemented and supported by library holdings of monographs and serials.

Then + Now
A brief overview of this Web site that compares what we knew in 1900 to what we know today
That's My Theory
Meet some of the scientists who made twentieth century history on this made-for-the-Web game show
On the Edge
These comic-book style stories take you back through time and present scientists soon after they made their discoveries

From the ancient classics to the masterpieces of the 20th century, the Great Books are all the introduction you’ll ever need to the ideas, stories and discoveries that have shaped modern civilization.

Click on letter to go to index.)
-A-
Ampère, André Marie (1775-1836):
Ampère, a teacher at Paris, has his permanent place in the history of science because it was his name that was given to the unit by which we measure electrical current. He had, of course, an interest in electricity; in addition, Ampère made similar investigations as did Avogadro into the nature of matter in its gaseous state.
Alfven, Hannes Olof Gosta (1908- ):
What I know of Alfven is that he was born in Sweden in 1908; and, while at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, in 1970, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics "for fundamental work and discoveries in magneto-hydrodynamics with fruitful applications in different parts of plasma physics." I first bumped into Alfven when I picked up a small paperback book of his, which I very much enjoyed, Atom, Man, and the Universe, The Long Chain of Complications (San Francisco: Freeman, 1969). It was written simply and plainly for a general audience, and enables us "to view ourselves both as a part of the atomic microcosm and as part of the universe that dwarfs us."

Cambridge mineralogist, moral philosopher, mystic, educator and polymath. As one contemporary put it, "science is his forte, omniscience is his foible". Although a close friend of the English historicist Richard Jones, William Whewell nonetheless set himself the task of translating a lot of given economic theory into mathematics (1829, 1830, 1850) -- an endeavor that was not warmly welcomed by many contemporaries. However, he did support Jones's inductive methodology in principle. His attempts to fit mathematical demand curves to data and his derivation of an equilibrium in trade in a 1850 article have led some to consider him a proto-Marginalist.

The EUL Manuscript Collection is among the foremost of such collections in Scotland and is of national and international significance. It includes valuable source material on a large range of subjects, such as mediaeval through to modern literature, Scottish history, African missions, covering a wide chronological span that reflects the important role of this University and its Library in Scottish society during the time the University and Library were begun in 1583 and 1580 respectively.

The first "pulp magazine" has not actually been identified per se, but it probably appeared in the 1880's. Some authorities claim that the first all fiction issue of The Argosy (Oct. 1896) is the first "pulp magazine," but there are hundreds of true pulp magazines that are not "all fiction". Why quibble? In April, 1894, The Argosy became a monthly magazine in the traditional 7 x 10 inch format, and it's a convenient place to start. There were some Horatio Alger stories in these early issues, and even a science fiction serial: A. Laurie's "A Month in the Moon", Feb.- Aug, 1897. Pulpdom's purpose is to explore and expose the pulp magazine phenomenom, so this is just the begining.

Welcome to The Science Behind The X-Files! As you can see, this page has undergone some serious restructuring, but it's still committed to bringing you all the cool science facts that can be found in each episode of The X-Files.
Just choose an episode at right to look at its science file. To make things easier, I've added a text-only version of each file, just in case you want to print it out. I've also cleaned out a bunch of dead links from the files and tried to reduce the load time of each page. (Aren't you lucky?)

Interesting WWW Sites about Science
Science: News, History and Museums