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How is that Supposed to Work, Exactly? (Part II)
Well, since some of you are curious about how the page might look in final form, given the (nicer than normal) rough I showed you a little while ago, I thought I'd show you. (For those of you not following, this is part of the graphic science book project I'm slowly working on. Show More Summary
E. O. Wilson and Learning the Wrong Lesson
One of the reasons I held off on commenting on the whole E. O. Wilson math op-ed thing, other than not having time to blog, was that his comments were based on his own experiences. And, you know, who am I to gainsay the personal experiences of a justly famous scientist? At the same time,…
Math and Science Are Not Cleanly Separable
One of the hot topics of the moment is the E. O. Wilson op-ed lamenting the way math scares students off from science, and downplaying the need for mathematical skill (this is not news, really– he said more or less the same thing a few years ago, but the Wall Street Journal published it to…
QStart conference in Jerusalem, June 24-27
Friend-of-the-blog Dorit Aharonov asked me to advertise the QStart Conference, which will be held at Hebrew University of Jerusalem June 24-27 of this year, to celebrate the opening of Hebrew University’s new Quantum Information Science...Show More Summary
To Mars and Beyond
I’m not sure either of these stories from the past week is particularly important in and of itself, but since I try and keep up on trends in theoretical physics, and two is a trend, here’s some news from two … Continue reading ?
Changeover Time
It's that time again. I finish a notebook and start a new one. A new book is begun with writing my name and contact information in the front part, in case it gets lost, and an old one is ended with mixed feelings, and that ending is often a bit drawn out. Show More Summary
“So You Think Quantum Computing Is Bunk?”
On Wednesday, I gave a fun talk with that title down the street at Microsoft Research New England. Disappointingly, no one in the audience did seem to think quantum computing was bunk (or if they did, they didn’t speak up): I was basically preaching to the choir. My PowerPoint slides are here. There’s also a [...]
ATV Reboost Homework
Even though I made a small calculation error, I still enjoyed my analysis of the International Space Station Reboost. You can check out the post over at the European Space Agency ATV blog. What was my error? Well, I used...
Conformal Standard Model is consistent with the observed Higgs particle
Robert Garisto is an Editor of Physical Review Letters, the flagship journal of American Physical Society and the one with the highest impact factor in physics. I follow him on twitter (@RobertGaristo) and he points out interesting papers that appear in the journal he works in. This time I read the following and turned immediately [...]
The Trouble With Physics
For something related to the book-in-progress, I was reading Raymond Chandler’s classic essay “The Simple Art of Murder” last night, and stumbled across the following quote, where he laments the number of stories in print in the mystery genre in 1950: In my less stilted moments I too write detective stories, and all this immortality…
Shall I compare thee to a spinning pulsar?
A scientist uses techniques from astronomy to investigate whether William Shakespeare really wrote all of those sonnets. William Shakespeare is one of the most widely known playwrights and masters of the English language—or so we think. Show More Summary
Q-Tube
This is a rare gem: Four lectures on quantum mechanics by Paul Dirac… on YouTube! Here’s the first one. Also, the Q+ online lecture series continues to go strong, bringing in a steady stream of high-quality speakers. This month constitutes … Continue reading ?
A Quick Check On ESPN’s Sport Science
It’s been quite some time since I looked at an ESPN Sport Science video. I probably shouldn’t look at all. However, it’s too late. I looked. But maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe these videos don’t just throw out random...
My Beloved Brontosaurus by Brian Switek
Back in January, thinking about science topics to add to the book-in-progress, it occurred to me that I would really be letting down SteelyKid (and pre-schoolers everywhere) if I didn’t take the opportunity to include something about dinosaurs. The problem with that, of course, is that I know next to nothing about dinosaurs, especially discoveries…
Arturo Gomez: Life among the telescopes
Arturo Gomez has spent more than 40 years working with visiting astronomers at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Ascending the mountain road to Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory at sunrise can reveal the destructive...Show More Summary
Pigs sprouted wings, Hell froze over, and I guest-posted on Luboš Motl’s blog
Furthermore, the last of those things actually happened. What won’t I do to promote Quantum Computing Since Democritus? Enjoy!
Does Decreased Brightness Increase Your Phone’s Battery Life?
Everyone hates it when their phone battery doesn’t make it through the day. Usually, I am ok since I don’t use the phone all that much. If it is a day of a soccer at a soccer tournament or gymnastics...
Reflections on the Discord Bubble
The following is a guest post by Marco Piani. A couple of months ago Steve wrote a post on “the discord bubble“. Let me try to provide a summary of his post and of his thoughts. There have been too … Continue reading ?
Mastermind by Maria Konnikova
I saw Maria Konnikova’s Mastermind on the book lottery stacks at Science Online, and the subtitle “How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes” practically screamed “This is relevant to your interests!” Not only am I writing a book about how to think like a scientist, one of the chapters I have in mind uses mystery novels…
Blogging Doesn’t Have to Be a Career
Last week, I gave my evangelical talk about science blogging to the Physics department at Wright State, and also a lot of education students who came to the talk (which made a nice change in the sort of questions I got). It’s basically this talk that I gave at Cornell a couple of years ago,…
- Large Hadron Collider
- Standard Model
- American Physical Society
- Quantum Mechanics
- Higgs Boson
- National Academy of Sciences
- Dark Matter
- Nobel Prize
- National Science Foundation
- Particle Physics
- Mars Science Laboratory
- International Space Station
- Serge Haroche
- John Preskill
- CERN
- Brian Greene
- Imperial College
- Scientific
- Field Theory
- Sean Carroll
