There’s someone for everyone, and here’s the touching way that two Aussie geeks got together. I can’t vouch for the authenticity of this, but PopSci shows a spoof paper posted in imgur by one physicist (presumably Australian) proposing to another. It’s a bit nerdy and cheesy, but cute. (Click to enlarge.) If you have a […]
UPDATE: I’ve heard from Dr. Randall, who objected to my characterization of her as an “atheist.” I apologize for that and add the correction she wishes to make: “. . . I rarely say I’m an atheist–I say I’m a nonbeliever. I actually think it’s a stupid word. (Do we have a word for non-most […]
I’ve just finished physicist Sean Carroll’s new book, The Particle at the End of the Universe (subtitled: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World), and want to give it two thumbs up. As far as I know, it’s the only popular account of the Higgs Hunt […]
Peter Higgs, the Man who Predicted the Boson, may be a crack physicist, but he’s a rank amateur when it comes to the issue of science and faith. According to yesterday’s Guardian, Higgs is using his new burst of fame to diss—who else?—fellow scientist Richard Dawkins. Higgs has chosen to cap his remarkable 2012 with another […]
If it were Schrödinger’s Dog, imagine how much less physics the layperson would know! Schrödinger’s Gedankenexperiment mit Katze was a felicitious (and felinitious) meme. The original suggestion, from Wikipedia: “One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct […]
Well, Time Magazine has tried to do science an honor by nominating a particle, the Higgs boson, for “Person of the Year” (there are other candidates and the winner will be announced in April). As Michael Moyer writes on the Scientific American “Observations” website, every sentence in the nomination has at least one error. Here’s […]
Once again we hear that science tells us how the world is, but religion answers the Really Big Questions. Sadly, this time it’s from a scientist, one at Matthew Cobb’s school. Jeff Forshaw is a professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy and University of Manchester, and has collaborated with Brian Cox in explaining […]
They may not have learned much, but at least they demonstrate an important principle, and how often do we see that?
Unlike some of my readers, I don’t dismiss all academic philosophy as worthless. The discipline imparts the tools of logic and throught that can clarify questions and bring contradictions to light. I think it’s of most value in illuminating (but not necessarily solving) ethical problems and dilemmas, but of less value for working scientists. But […]
Yep, it was first demonstrated on October 9, 1962 by Nick Holonyak, Jr., an employee of General Electric. As Wired notes, In the early 1960s, the only light emitted from LEDs was infrared. The race to produce a visible LED had GE researchers scrambling to be first. Holonyak suggested using a mixture of gallium arsenide and […]
