SCIENCE

Weird and Wonderful Nudibranchs

January 22, 2024

By Paul Erickson

Quirky people fascinate me.

Take certain kinds of collectors. Some collect snippets of rusty 19th-century barbed wire. Others swipe barf bags (unused), printed with company logos, from commercial airlines. Still others find it appealing to gather banana label stickers, keeping them in treasured volumes like stamp collections.

Maine Mineral & Gem Museum

A COSMOS Discovery in the Middle of Maine

September 4, 2024

By Chris Munkholm

While perambulating the vicinity of our Air B&B in Harrison, Maine, we stumbled upon the Maine Mineral & Gem Museum. And discovered an entry portal into the inner earth of mineral excavation, an historical industry in Maine. We were astounded by the curated contents of natural and cut specimens. Never has a region’s history produced such a visual tour de force. The elegant galleries tell the history of mining in Maine through a stunning display of gorgeous mineral rocks …

Iceland’s Upper Crust

COSMOS Explores the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

September 20, 2023

By Paul Erickson

At 4:30 AM on 18 November 1775, an earthquake rocked eastern Massachusetts, tilting church steeples, and sending the grasshopper weathervane atop Boston’s Faneuil Hall hopping to the plaza below. Today, geologists link this magnitude 6 quake with an undersea fault line—a fracture in the bedrock—27 miles east of Rockport. …

Glam Clams

June 14, 2023

By Paul Erickson

I’d like to tell you about the huge “killer” clams I’ve photographed on Indo-Pacific coral reefs. And I will. But first, I’d like to pay homage to our local softshell clam (Mya arenaria), famously harvested in my hometown of Ipswich, Massachusetts, which is located just a few flaps of a gull’s wing from Cape Ann. …