Ryan Marciniak, Physics and Astronomy editor If you haven’t heard of Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques, it’s because today is his first day on the job, at least when it comes to living and working in space. Cramming into a Soyuz capsule on a launchpad in Kazakhstan, Saint-Jacques is taking his first flight to the International […]
Technology & Engineering
Biogas: A pungent power solution
Kirsten Grant, General Science co-editor On a dairy farm in southern Ontario, two large green silos sit beside the barn. Called anaerobic digesters, their contents smell like a mix of manure and rotting food waste. But there is more than a smelly concoction inside these oxygen-deprived tanks – microbes are at work breaking down organic […]
Ethanol: A cocktail drink and a clean and sustainable fuel for your car
Sunitha Chari, Biology & Life Sciences co-editor While horse-drawn carriages are a quaint reminder of Victorian England, the internal combustion engine that powers our automobiles is one of the most significant inventions of the 19th century. There are approximately 34 million motor vehicles in Canada. While some are public or shared transport, it is not […]
The science fiction and reality of spaceflight
Ryan Marciniak, Astronomy and Physics Co-Editor Science fiction has captured humanity’s dreams of travelling to distant stars, colonizing new worlds, accessing new dimensions, encountering hostile aliens, and surviving a galaxy far, far away. Yet with all our real-world technological prowess, why haven’t any of these dreams become reality? The short answer is that flying into […]
Art that’s out of this world
Katrina Vera Wong and Raymond Nakamura, Multimedia co-editors As Science Borealis Multimedia editors, we scour the known universe, meaning Canada, for examples of science communication in all its myriad forms. Vancouver artist and educator Erin Green has been creating space-inspired art for about 10 years. She says, “Space art makes space science more relatable and […]