Look in the mountains to the west of Tucson and your eye will be drawn to a set of shimmering rectangles that dominate the valley floor. These are not solar panels, nor parking lots, nor any nefarious construction. They are immense pools of water, part of the Central Arizona Project. Tucson’s need for water has…

Late afternoon sun reflects from deeply incised bedrock. How large is this scene – are we looking at a canyon hundreds of feet deep, or instead at a small rivulet? The stream here is nearly one foot wide. You probably guessed that correctly, but how? The mind is adept at picking up on small cues…

Ever been to one? A few months ago I was allocated two days of beamtime at the Advanced Photon Source, which is part of DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory. The facility accelerates electrons to energies of 7 GeV (equivalent to moving at more than 99% the speed of light), then uses large magnets to convert the…

In the 1880s, the town of Total Wreck was home to a thriving silver mine and a few hundred people. Now, all that remains are a few stone walls and caved-in tunnels. The geology in the area is very strange: I found a bedrock cut on the side of a stream-bank, with rock mostly a…