Geoff Brumfiel
Geoff Brumfiel works as a senior editor and correspondent on NPR's science desk. His editing duties include science and space, while his reporting focuses on the intersection of science and national security.
From April of 2016 to September of 2018, Brumfiel served as an editor overseeing basic research and climate science. Prior to that, he worked for three years as a reporter covering physics and space for the network. Brumfiel has carried his microphone into ghost villages created by the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan. He's tracked the journey of highly enriched uranium as it was shipped out of Poland. For a story on how animals drink, he crouched for over an hour and tried to convince his neighbor's cat to lap a bowl of milk.
Before NPR, Brumfiel was based in London as a senior reporter for Nature Magazine from 2007-2013. There, he covered energy, space, climate, and the physical sciences. From 2002 – 2007, Brumfiel was Nature Magazine's Washington Correspondent.
Brumfiel is the 2013 winner of the Association of British Science Writers award for news reporting on the Fukushima nuclear accident.
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Why and when tickling makes us laugh is still mysterious. But researchers who studied what happens in rat brains when they're tickled say they emit ultrasonic giggles, too — when in the mood for fun. -
The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to David Thouless, who gets half the prize, and Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz, who share the other half.
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Two individuals have been flown out of the South Pole in the dead of Antarctic winter. It's only the third such evacuation ever conducted. -
A sick worker at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station must be evacuated by plane at the height of the Antarctic winter. The current temperature is -70 degrees Fahrenheit. -
For the second time in recent months, scientists say they have picked up distortions in space and time. The find suggests smaller-sized black holes may be more numerous than many scientists thought. -
In India, there is money to be made fighting air pollution. NPR examines one product geared towards the bad air: a negative ion necklace.
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Scientists drilling beneath the Gulf of Mexico have hit the layer deposited when an asteroid the size of Staten Island, N.Y., hit Earth. Samples might contain details from that fateful day. -
Internet Billionaire Yuri Milner on Tuesday announced plans to travel to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri. A trip would take thousands of years with existing technology.
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SpaceX successfully launched a rocket to resupply the International Space Station and landed the rocket on a drone ship at sea on Friday.
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On Wednesday in South Korea, a Google AI program will take on a top-level player in the ancient game of Go. Here's what you need to know.
