SCIENCE AND SPACE STORIES BY PETER MCMAHON
Solar Storm (cover story on the Solar Maximum, originally for Canadian Geographic print edition)
This is your brain as a dad (originally for the print edition of Today’s Parent)
The new stargazing: Dark sky preserves in an age of light pollution (originally for the print edition of Reader’s Digest)
Behind the science of movie special effects (cover story originally for the print edition of OWL Magazine)
Rebooting the search for dark matter (for Innovation.ca the online magazine of Canada Foundation for Innovation)
Science of selfies (originally for the print edition of University of Toronto Magazine)
Preserving the night sky (originally for Canadian Geographic print & online edition)
U of T chemistry team advances to ‘close the carbon cycle’ (for University of Toronto web site)
International Space Station to carry Canadian science projects (originally for University Affairs magazine print edition)
Exclusive: New lizard species discovered in the Caribbean (exclusive, broke the story on U of T research that then went out to media)
Explainer: How oil gets to you (for Let’s Talk Science’s online magazine Curiocity)
Starry, starry night (originally for The Nature Conservancy magazine print edition)
Interview with Hugo-award-winning Canadian sci-fi author Robert Sawyer (for Innovation.ca the online magazine of Canada Foundation for Innovation)
Dark Sky at Night (originally for Saltscapes magazine print edition)
Humans process faces and buildings with the same part of the brain (report on University of Toronto study for the U of T web site)
5 reasons you could be flying in space by 2024 (for AskMen.com)
Chris Hadfield orbital YouTube videos (wrote scripts for five of them for the Canadian Space Agency – this one got 8 million views AND this one got 20 million views as well as dozens of articles for the Canadian Space Agency web site and print materials)
BOOKS
Ultimate Trains (Kids Can Press, 2010)
Space Tourism (Kids Can Press, 2011)
The Space Adventurer’s Guide (Kids Can Press, 2018)
AWARDS
- winner – $10,000 Lane Anderson Prize for Canadian science writing in 2019
- winner – 2019 ALTO Award for excellence in Alberta Tourism, presented by Edmonton International Airport, through Travel Alberta.
- recommended- 2019 Canadian Children’s Book Centre prize
- nominated – 2019 Forest of Reading Red Maple award (generally regarded as the top prize for children’s writing in Canada
- currently shortlisted – 2020 Red Cedar Award
- winner – 2005 Veronique Morin prize for science writing, presented by Encana
- numerous grants and bursaries from CIHR, Canada Council for the Arts, etc..
STORY RESEARCH GRANT TRAVEL
In 2012, 2013 & 2014, spent several weeks in parts of California and Florida on a Canada Council research grant to interview experts and become immersed in the culture of private spaceflight and the space tourism industry for latest children’s book on the topic and a possible future adult title.
Spent several months travelling throughout Canada from 2011 – 2016 observing the skies and interviewing local experts on the dark sky preserves of Canada for Sky News, Reader’s Digest, Saltscapes, and numerous in-flight magazines (enRoute, UpHere, Northern Journal, etc..) and other magazines, with the help of grants from local tourism authorities.
On a media tour sponsored by the government of Chile, spent a week as an invited science journalist in winter of 2017 in Chile’s Atacama Desert researching the explosive growth of both scientific research at European Southern Observatory and the ALMA array (the largest, most powerful astronomy apparatus in the world) as well as astronomy tourism in the region, during the announcement of the discovery by telescopes at ESO in Chile seven planets orbiting around the TRAPPIST-1 star system – more than had ever been discovered previously around one star,