If you’re self-employed, you already have a lot to worry about besides retirement planning. You fulfill every role in your company from the executive suite to the cleaning crew. Absolutely nothing gets done unless you do it yourself. Most of these roles probably aren’t your specialty either, and tackling them can seem daunting. Since you still need time to do actual work, vital components of your business, like retirement planning, can get pushed to the side. Planning for your future doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming, though. If you were self-employed in 2020, now is the perfect time to open a self-employed 401k. …

As I reflect back on this year, I can’t help but ask myself, “isn’t 2020 over yet?” The pace might be glacial, but we’re getting there. Truthfully, it hasn’t been all bad. If you were fortunate enough to achieve escape velocity this year, there was a lot going on outside of Earth’s gravitational pull.

Users rate articles even if they haven’t read them, new research shows

See if this sounds familiar: You sit down at your computer ready to read a few stories on your favorite social media site. You start scrolling through your feed and come across an article with a catchy title on a subject that interests you. You read the first couple of paragraphs and think, “this writer must be a genius, because I agree with everything they’re saying!” You up-vote the article without reading the rest of it and move on to the next one.

I admit to being guilty of this and worse: I up-vote articles before I read them. I figure if the title intrigues me enough to click on the link, it deserves a high-five. I never thought providing such basic feedback on a story would change how I read it. …

Research reveals clues about Earth’s atmosphere and the unique conditions that gave rise to life on this planet

I want you to travel through time for a moment. Not for minutes, or seconds, or hours, but eons, what geologists call Deep Time, billions of years in the past. Such a vast amount of time almost defies human imagination. 4.5 billion years ago, Earth was in its infancy, rocked in the cradle of the early solar system by constant bombardments. Planets vied with one another for supremacy and not all of them survived.

The fate of our solar system was ultimately decided by gravity and orbital mechanics. Earth emerged as one of the winners by accruing enough mass to hold itself together during the heavy bombardment period. Theia, in theory, was one of the losers. Theia, a planetesimal roughly the size of Mars, collided with the early Earth. Most of the impacts during this period are thought to have been glancing blows, leaving the two jousting planetary objects battered, but intact. …

Five years ago, I was on the way to the airport with my husband, about to embark on the trip of a lifetime. We were on our way to Argentina, and from there, we would set sail for the shores of Antarctica. No emails, no meetings. Just solitude and ice. I needed the break. Work had been tough with rumors floating around about possible layoffs and a major restructuring of the company. For the most part, I shrugged those off. I would deal with the consequences if and when they happened, but my own flippant attitude was overwhelmed by the doom and gloom in the office. …

After a rocky start, gig work has given me the flexibility to do what I want

For a long time I didn’t think I’d ever retire. I grew up hearing whispers that social security wouldn’t be there to support my generation, so we had better learn to support ourselves. I planned to work forever and sought out a career I thought I’d find fulfilling for decades to come. It felt like a marriage of sorts, a commitment I couldn’t see my way out of. I decided to make the best of it.

I became a petrophysicist in the oil and gas industry and quickly fell in love with my profession. As a petrophysicist, I study the rocks, minerals, and fluids below the Earth’s surface. It’s fun and intellectually challenging. My career gave me the chance to meet a lot of interesting people and tackle some intriguing problems. …

Medium is a fantastic platform for writers and readers to connect with each other. Whether you’re interested in poetry, personal essays, or space exploration, Medium can help you connect to a community of like-minded people. For the most part, it’s a reasonably sane corner of the internet.

While Medium is all of these things, there’s one thing it is not: a source for truthful, honest reporting. To be fair, there are publications on here that employ fact-checkers and editors to vet their stories (like Politifact and The Economist, both of which have stopped publishing on Medium), but there are also plenty that don’t. Medium gives you the freedom to publish almost anything you want — including things that aren’t true. …

In March of this year I found myself staring out over a sea of clouds from the top of Mount Taranaki on the north island of New Zealand. At the time, I was only thinking about putting one foot in front of the other as I climbed the steep scree field on the mountain’s north side. That, and the pack of Tim Tams I had stashed away for a small celebration at the summit. I definitely wasn’t thinking about radioactive isotopes, but maybe I should have been. …