News
Media Coverage
16 June 2018
Tech titan Nathan Myhrvold revisits NASA asteroid argument in peer-reviewed paper
Nathan Myhrvold is back, and this time he’s got peer review on his side. Two years ago, the Seattle tech pioneer tangled with NASA and the scientists behind an infrared sky survey mission known as NEOWISE, over a data set that cataloged the characteristics of more than 157,000 asteroids. In a lengthy assessment, Myhrvold said the NEOWISE team had made flawed and misleading correlations between the brightness and the size of asteroids.
16 June 2018
Asteroid battle: Tech entrepreneur doubles down on critique of NASA mission
Nathan Myhrvold argues that the scientific approach of the landmark NEOWISE space-rock mission is deeply flawed.
15 June 2018
Asteroids and Adversaries: Challenging What NASA Knows About Space Rocks
Two years ago, NASA dismissed and mocked an amateur’s criticisms of its asteroids database. Now Nathan Myhrvold is back, and his papers have passed peer review.
15 May 2017
Inside the Invention Factory of Polymath Nathan Myhrvold
This confidant of Bill Gates wants to reinvent how inventions are born. He created a huge patent library and a “start-up factory” that has produced prototypes of nuclear reactors, antennas and radars, but also 900 new bread recipes...
23 June 2016
Nathan Myhrvold, the man top chefs turn to for food science advice
The golden loaves of bread cooling on the rack, the seven gleaming ovens and the 23-kilogram sacks of flour would look at home in a commercial bakery. But the chefs bent over tubs of dough also have a washing-machine-sized centrifuge, a freeze dryer and a fully outfitted photo studio at their disposal. And instead of bread for sale, the team of chefs and scientists at work in this cavernous kitchen in the suburbs east of Seattle are producing a 2000-page, vividly photographed book full of molecular research and recipes that will challenge traditional assumptions about how to produce the perfect loaf. The five-volume Modernist Bread: The Art and Science, coming to sturdy bookshelves in March 2017, is the latest tome from The Cooking Lab, the research kitchen and publishing house founded by Nathan Myhrvold.
Press Releases
16 December 2013
Study Shows Some Dinosaur Growth Rates Lower Than Previously Thought
Nathan Myhrvold cautions against drawing unsupported conclusions from dinosaur growth data
30 September 2013
Climate change: fast out of the gate, slow to the finish
A new study by Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira and Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures concludes that about half of the warming occurs within the first 10 years after an instantaneous step increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, but about one-quarter of the warming occurs more than a century after the step increase. Their work is published in Environmental Research Letters.
16 February 2012
Only the lowest CO2 emitting technologies can avoid a hot end-of-century
Could replacing coal-fired electricity plants with generators fueled by natural gas bring global warming to a halt in this century? What about rapid construction of massive numbers of solar or wind farms, hydroelectric dams, or nuclear reactors—or the invention of new technology for capturing the carbon dioxide produced by fossil-fueled power plants and storing it permanently underground? Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures teamed up with Carnegie Institution’s Ken Caldeira to calculate the expected climate effects of replacing the world’s supply of electricity from coal plants with any of eight cleaner options.