Everything Is Amazing

4 days ago | everythingisamazing.substack.com | Mike Sowden

Hello! This is Everything Is Amazing - a romp through the sciences in search of a good wow. This thing works in seasons, and the one we’re currently in is looking at the sciences of the atmosphere, which we’ll be returning to properly in the next edition. But if you remember the recent story of early aeronauts Coxwell and Glaisher and their uncontrollable balloon ascent into the ‘Death Zone’ - here’s a modern equivalent from last week that’s just as blood-curdling…if it can be believed.

2 weeks ago | everythingisamazing.substack.com | Mike Sowden |Brendan Leonard

Hello! This is Everything Is Amazing, a newsletter about science, enthusiastically applied curiosity and drunk octopuses wanting a fight. In a few days, and after a great deal more reading than I was expecting (hence the delay), I’ll be cracking on with this! But today, two delightful things that make me feel very, very lucky to run this newsletter. Firstly: if you’ve been reading for a while, you’ll know I’m a huge fan of ’s work.

3 weeks ago | everythingisamazing.substack.com | Mike Sowden

Hello! This is Everything Is Amazing, a newsletter about distracting oddities in science, like weird sky smells and nasal hallucinations. This season, we’re looking at the world of wonders over our heads - and in researching a recent newsletter, I discovered the arresting notion that if all the air was squeezed out of a cloud and then what was left fell on you in one go, it would instantly kill you. The math: cumulus cloud density is estimated to be around 0.5 grams per cubic meter.

1 month ago | everythingisamazing.substack.com | Mike Sowden

Hello! This is Everything Is Amazing, a newsletter about science and wonder and the timeless wisdom of not eating plutonium and other ridiculousness. Today’s edition is a very special one. (And it’s also a spectacularly long one - so you will need to click through to the Web version if you’re reading this in your email provider’s Inbox, because it’ll be cut off somewhere below.)First, a true story.

1 month ago | everythingisamazing.substack.com | Mike Sowden

Hello! This is Everything Is Amazing, a newsletter about science, curiosity, wonder, and how ancient people were only as daft as we are. The big international science headline of the last week was possible signs of life on another planet!Okay. We’ve been here before and seen statements this dramatic that turned out (for now) to be false alarms - and true to form, the word “possible” is doing a LOT of work here, as befitting analysis of a world that’s 700 trillion miles away.