So what can this unusual library tell us? First, there is the simple parts list. The most common component was organic material, present in 40 of the 63 particles – exactly what is unclear, but it could be anything from pollen to sloughed-off bits of researcher. Quartz, found in 34 particles, came next, followed by carbonates (17 particles) and gypsum (14). “The minerals blow in,” says Coe. “They come from all over the world.” Other ingredients included air pollutants and fertiliser chemicals.

Anyone counting will also have noticed that there are already more components than particles. That is because most specks of dust are conglomerates, which means they may take an infinite variety of forms, much like snowflakes. The next obvious step was to find out what individual conglomerates looked like, but pinpointing exactly which speck corresponded to which spectrum wasn’t going to be easy. So Coe launched a competition. The first person to capture an electron microscope image of a particle that had already been analysed with infrared light would get to name it. And, if that was not enough, there was a free dinner on offer too. What student could fail to rise to that challenge?

We are on a septic tank waste system but the house is supplied by an excellent regional municipal water system. Internet service is accessible through the phone line, and heating is provided by propane that is stored in a large horizontal steel sausage recumbent in the backyard. The cost-to-heat ratio is similar to taking the dollar bills used to purchase the fuel and burning them in a large iron kettle.

The horses love it here, too. After years of reasonable care at boarding facilities, they are happy to be home with us (at last!). These two middle-aged bachelors are more connected than ever to the human beings with whom they share their existence, and not surprisingly because their life is very good, more devoted to each other.

I never noticed the wind so much before but we now reside on something of a slightly elevated plateau. The same prevailing air currents that strip our flesh in the winter also carry the heat past us in summer and bring relief—until they whip themselves into sodden, tree-breaking, shingle-stealing fury. Or drop to an unexpected dead calm and we are poached in our own sweat.

An eight-acre lot is small by commercial farm standards, but still presents plenty of opportunities to engage the enthusiastic lawn care hobbyist. Grass and weeds keep growing out of the earth and we have to cut them every couple of hours. If we are not shearing or killing flora then we are servicing the arsenal of tools used to defend ourselves from the green menace. Fuel, as I mentioned, is a twenty minute round trip.

I grew up in a decaying inner city neighborhood. The glacial advance of violent crime overran the landscape and I was happy and sad to flee. Our new homestead overlooks pasturing cows and miles of weed-footed, wildflowered fences. The tree line frames our broad horizon; a color-shifting wall that defines the seasons. There are more guns around here than in Tripoli.

Our neighbors love to discharge firearms as often as possible. While working outside (cutting grass, most likely) you can hear the birds, cows, insects, and shotguns. Lots of handguns and somebody breaks out their fully automatic assault rifle from time to time, squeezing off a few quick bursts. I feel as if I brought a knife to an airstrike. We are surrounded. I need more guns.

I think there is a local ordinance: you are compelled to own a pack of dogs and keep them inside a large metal building, but cars, trucks, and tractors should be left in the yard. Where I come from, we used to do the opposite. In the evenings nowadays, when it’s too dark to mow grass or shoot anything, the dogs all around us begin to bark and howl their resonant, melancholy lament. It is the Ohio hinterlands’ lullaby.

Our border collie, in a blatant violation of community standards, does not reside in a hollow-sounding corrugated steel structure. When we walk the property at night—he to do his business and I to catch a whiff of the earth’s cooling crust—I gaze upward to see all the suns that were ever made, embedded as they are in the black gesso of the northern hemisphere sky. The Milky Way’s arc and glow press down. I look better in starlight.

Point:

The Earth and moon have two Trojan points, one leading ahead of the moon, known as the L-4 point of the system, and one trailing behind, its L-5 point.

The researchers computed that this second moon could have stayed at a Trojan point for tens of millions of years. Eventually, however, this Trojan moon’s orbit would have destabilized once our moon’s orbit expanded far enough away from Earth.

The resulting collision would have been relatively slow at 4,500 to 6,700 miles per hour (7,200 to 10,800 kph), leading its matter to splatter itself across our moon as a thick extra layer of solid crust tens of miles thick instead of forming a crater.

Counterpoint:

A number of explanations have been proposed for the far side’s highlands, including one suggesting that gravitational forces were the culprits rather than an impact from Francis Nimmo at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues. Nimmo said that for now there is not enough data to say which of the proposals offers the best explanation for this lunar contrast. “As further spacecraft data and, hopefully, lunar samples are obtained, which of these two hypotheses is more nearly correct will become clear,” Nimmo said in a statement.

Astronomers will celebrate a remarkable event on 11 July. It will be exactly one year since the planet Neptune was discovered.

At its most intense, the storm generated more than 10 lightning flashes per second. Even with millisecond resolution, the spacecraft’s radio and plasma wave instrument had difficulty separating individual signals during the most intense period. Scientists created a sound file from data obtained . . . at a slightly lower intensity period.

If you listen vary carefully to the audio file, you can hear Sun Ra.

I am falling in love with these heat- and drought-resistant little tepary beans, just as I fell in love with the Sonoran desert. They are so damn tasty pretty much as they are. And they are high in protein and fiber and release sugar very very slowly.

And Tohono O’odham (Papago) legend has it that the Milky Way is made of tepary beans scattered across the sky.

I’m a believer.

He was looking for the first day of summer and for when the full moon was going to happen next week, and he discovered that today is a good day to castrate animals, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac Astrological Timetable.

A 22-year-old Australian university student has solved a problem which has puzzled astrophysicists for decades, discovering part of the so-called “missing mass” of the universe during her summer break.

When I was twenty-two, I cleared fifty people off a dance floor.