With Harry Potter due out in a couple of days, what better time for a special journal issue on the real research on invisibility. The latest: a formula for a cloak that could hide a bank robbery. (Other than the nagging problem that you'd see robbers setting it up....) Here's my article from National Geographic News. Could a Space-Time Cloak Make Events Dissappear?

The planet Neptune is now one "year" older since it was first seen. What do we know about it (not much). What do we want to know (a lot). Why -- because there are lots of Neptune-like worlds being discovered circling other stars, and the better we understand ours, the better we can understand them.

Here is my story on the topic, for Nature News: Neptune Begins to Give Up Its Secrets.

In 1859, the Sun exploded. But what if the biggest solar storm in history repeated itself today? Bad news, scientists say. No GPS. No credit-card swipes. No power -- possibly for months. Here's my story, for National Geographic News. Carrington Event of 1859: Largest Solar Storm Ever