The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason

Intriguing title, no? These are the first eleven words of Neal Stephenson’s novel Seveneves, which set up the remaining 600 pages as an extended treatise on the future of humanity as it copes with certain annihilation. I thoroughly recommend it, as long as you can deal with hundreds of pages of orbital mechanics. In this post I will numerically explore this post-lunar age, to verify for myself if it would be as deadly as described.

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Going Viral

Diseases have been in the news recently, for one reason or another, and journalists are engaged in an increasingly ridiculous race to construct the most alarming headlines possible. How about we cut through the noise and indulge in a calming bit of maths?

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