Pacific Standard

Nov 2, 2024 | psmag.com | Terese Mailhot

Why Do Native Women Keep Disappearing? North America is still not safe for indigenous women—and we need all the support we can get.

Aug 28, 2024 | psmag.com | Emily Moon

On Mars, we’ll all farm underground. Our crops will grow in a greenhouse, where large, parabolic mirrors focus the sun’s weak rays and transmit them through fiber optic cables. We’ll harvest vegetables to eat—but also the purified water that evaporates from their leaves. We’ll all be vegan, because raising animals for food will be too expensive. And, most importantly, the plants will give us oxygen.

Aug 28, 2024 | psmag.com | Ben Rowen

By accident of Earth’s 23.5-degree tilt and the specific geography of our view of space, amateur astronomers and travelers who find themselves lost in the Northern hemisphere have long searched for Ursa Major, the great bear, whose torso is formed by the conspicuous Big Dipper. Amid the pandemonium of the night sky, the Dipper moonlights as outer space’s guide, revealing the locations of more obscure stars and constellations.

Aug 28, 2024 | psmag.com | Tom Jacobs

To get from the Pacific Coast to the idyllic, mountain-surrounded town of Ojai, California, you drive by a series of working oil wells, clearly visible just off the side of the freeway. They serve as a reminder that Ventura is the third-biggest oil-producing county in California—a fact that did not go unmentioned last Thursday night, as the Ojai Playwrights Conference, an annual event that attracts world-class talent, kicked off with an evening centering around climate change.

Aug 27, 2024 | psmag.com | Kate Wheeling

Ever since humans became a spacefaring species, settling down on other planets has seemed an inevitability—even a necessity. Scientific titans including Stephan Hawking and Carl Sagan believed humans were “obliged” to leave Earth, if only to ensure our survival as a species. The dinosaurs didn’t have a space program, as the space-industry axiom goes, and look where it got them.