Home / Alexandra Witze

I’m a science journalist in Boulder, Colorado, who specializes in the earth, planetary and astronomical sciences. See below for selected clips, or check out my Twitter feed for more recent news (@alexwitze).

My book ISLAND ON FIRE, coauthored with my husband Jeff Kanipe, is about the extraordinary 18th-century eruption of the Icelandic volcano Laki.

Reach me at witzescience@gmail.com.

Nature • 5th January 2021

Will increasing traffic to the Moon contaminate its precious ice?

“We have an obligation to do no harm to future science investigations”, says Lisa Pratt, NASA's planetary-protection officer.

Nature • 23rd September 2020

Universities will never be the same after the coronavirus crisis

How virtual classrooms and dire finances could alter academia. Part 1 in a series on science after the pandemic.

Nature • 14th January 2020

How the fight over a Hawaii mega-telescope could change astronomy

The Thirty Meter Telescope controversy is forcing scientists to grapple with how their research affects Indigenous peoples.

Nature • 21st November 2019

Interstellar intruders

Researchers grapple with the meaning of the first objects entering our Solar System from distant regions.

Nature • 16th July 2019

These young scientists will shape the next 50 years of Moon research

Half a century after Apollo, Nature profiles five researchers who are shaking up lunar exploration.

Knowable • 14th March 2019

The secrets of extreme wildfires

Researchers probe the weather-like physics of deadly infernos.

The Atlantic • 26th April 2018

Earth may have been formed by a bunch of tiny space pebbles

In the early days of our solar system, the fastest way to build a planet was likely through small bodies, not giant ones, crashing into each other.

Air & Space Magazine • 1st October 2017

As the earth melts

ABOVE THE NORTHEAST GREENLAND ICE STREAM — Seen from the window of a Lockheed P-3 Orion turboprop flying at 1,500 feet, Greenland’s ice seems to go on forever.

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