33 years ago, Top Gun made us fans of dogfights, the ‘healthy’ rivalry between Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer, and one of the most famous ballads of all time. But the most important thing we can learn from this movie is how the missile system works. It’s the classic electronic sight ‘looking for’ the enemy plane on the screen… and when it ‘locks on’ it, you fire and [ Hasta la vista, baby ]. In theory, once the missile “smells” the heat trace of the other ship, it is responsible for targeting the target itself. Can you imagine that it ... [keep reading...]

Education is empowering, but grades and titles foster a silly competition over whose resumé is bigger. That reminds me of Williamina Fleming, who became immortal in a very odd way: Williamina was a Scottish woman in her early 20s when she found herself in quite a predicament. She had moved to the United States with her husband, whom she had just married. He left her as soon as they got there. Oh, and she was pregnant. Returning to Scotland was not an option, so she started to work as a maid for Edward Pickering, an astrophysicist and director of the Harvard ... [keep reading...]

  Arrogance is usually frowned upon, as everyone says that you should always be humble and modest. But a couple sentences from Albert Einstein in 1919 are a great example of the only attitude that will get you far: In 1919, a solar eclipse had special significance for the scientific community. It was an opportunity to prove Einstein's general theory of relativity; he predicted that the curvature of space would distort the light of stars . They would bend like "Wanted" movie bullets. An expedition was organized and they finally confirmed that Einstein was right. One of his pupils asked him, ... [keep reading...]

  "The real enemy is within your mind" is a really worn out cliché... that will still be true no matter what. There's an anecdote of famed orchestra director Artur Rodzinski that helps illustrate this perennial fact: One evening, Rodzinski was driving when he saw a billboard announcing an open-air concert that was being broadcasted by radio at that very moment. The program included one of his own specialties: Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, directed by Fabien Sevitzky. He didn't respect Sevitzky much, but he tuned in to the broadcast anyway. The concert had already begun. Just a few seconds in, and he ... [keep reading...]