BOLOGNA, Italy — Cold rainwater was puddling on the red-marble floors of the San Petronio basilica late Saturday morning as several hundred people crowded at one end of the cavernous Gothic cathedral.

The year is 1851, and doubts regarding the Earth spinning is also a massive one, as many people argue over this activity of the planet and how it relates to other entities in the galaxy. However, the ...

PROF. GREENHILL gives currency to quite an erroneous idea, in last week's NATURE (p. 50). He says “in the Foucault experiment of the pendulum which shows the rotation of the earth, the slightest ...

Last week over in Twitter-land, Philip Ball asked an interesting question: I’ve written a fair bit about historical science, and read more than I’ve written, so this question stuck with me, and seems ...