Patrick Kiger
Patrick J. Kiger has written for HowStuffWorks since 2008 covering a wide array of topics, from history and politics to pop culture and technology. He worked as a newspaper reporter for the Pittsburgh Press, and the Orange County Register in California, where he covered one of the biggest serial murder cases in U.S. history, and also as a staff writer at Baltimore Magazine. As a freelancer, Patrick has written for print publications such as GQ, Mother Jones and the Los Angeles Times, and on the web for National Geographic Channel, Discovery News, Science Channel and Fast Company, among others. In recent years, he's become increasingly interested in how technological advances are altering urban life and the design of cities, and has written extensively on that subject for Urban Land magazine. In his spare time, Patrick is a longtime martial arts student and a fan of crime fiction, punk rock and classic Hollywood films.
RECENT CONTRIBUTIONS
Anders' Earthrise and 8 Homeward are the two moon craters recently named in honor of the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, the first NASA mission to orbit the moon.
While green roofs make sense in a lot of ways, requiring their installation isn't as simple as it might seem.
Sir Michael Atiyah says he has proven the Riemann Hypothesis, one of the long-unsolved problems in mathematics.
Though treason is the only crime mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, few know what the word actually means and fewer still have ever been indicted for it.
It's sometimes easy to confuse the two, but weather and climate are very different things.
CERN researchers have successfully tested a new way of accelerating electrons to high energies through proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration.
The search team used a radar-equipped drone to locate a P-38 from the so-called "Lost Squadron" that crash-landed in Greenland in 1942. But the story doesn't end there.
Ordinary citizens are allowed to make arrests in every U.S. state, but legal experts warn that it's a risky thing to do.
Visionaries have proposed various ways to get into space without using large rockets for propulsion, such as building a space elevator or harnessing magnetic levitation.
It may seem unfair that cops can lie in wait for speeding motorists, but legally, speed traps aren't entrapment. Still, some states have imposed laws to limit their use as a revenue source.
Fast radio bursts are over in less time than it takes to blink your eye. They come from way beyond the Milky Way. And astronomers can't say with certainty what causes these enigmatic bursts.
The tiny HaloSat probe will investigate a galactic halo of hot gas that may account for missing matter from the early universe.
Chernobyl affected European wines. Fukushima seems to have affected at least a small slice of California wines. The question is how much?
But don't buy your lakefront property just yet.
Composites from DNA in cold cases is helping investigators make predictions about the appearance of both suspects and victims in hopes of generating leads.
The Russian anthropomorphic robot can fire a handgun, do push-ups and even drive a car. Now it's going off into space.
The Trump administration wants to develop a new generation of low-yield nuclear weapons that could be used without launching an all-out nuclear war.
The new 3D color scans look like cross sections from a vividly realistic anatomical model, revealing great detail and true-to-life color.
Who takes the hit when the U.S. president levies tariffs on our trading partners?
Researchers say that Otzi, the ancient man found in the Alps in 1991, lived on a diet loaded with fat to maintain warmth and energy in his cold, high-altitude environment.
