All Blogs / Academics / Physics / Popular
Three Science Words We Should Stop Using
How can we improve everyone’s ideas about the nature of science? I think there are three words that we shouldn’t use. Word 1: Hypothesis In my opinion, this one is the worst. The worst science word ever! Well, not ever,...
OPERA snags third tau neutrino
For the third time since the OPERA detector began receiving beam in 2006, the experiment has caught a muon neutrino oscillating into a tau neutrino. For the third time ever, scientists have seen the particle transformation that explains...Show More Summary
How particle physics improves your life
From MRIs to shrink wrap, particle physics technology improves the world we live in. Diapers
I Teach for Free, They Pay Me to Grade
Over at Unqualified Offerings, Thoreau has a bit of a rant about what students perceive as grading on a “curve”: Moreover, many students have only the foggiest idea of what a curve is. Many (though probably not all) of their high schools had fixed grading scales with fixed percentages for each letter grade. The A/A-…
Hey, Ho, Ohio: Two Talks at Wright State, Thursday March 28
Kind of short notice, but if you’re in the appropriate bits of Ohio, you might be interested to know that I’m giving two talks at Wright State this Thursday. At 11am, I’m doing the Physics Department Colloquium in 202 Oelman Hall, “Talking to My Dog About Science: Why Public Communication of Science Matters, and How…
Sen. Tom Coburn, the National Science Foundation, and Antarctican Jello Wrestling
As some of you probably heard, last week Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) managed to get an amendment passed prohibiting the US National Science Foundation from funding any research in political science, unless the research can be “certified” as “promoting national security or the economic interests of the United States.” This sort of political interference with [...]
Why Does a Comet Have a Tail?
Actually, comets have two tails. So, this is the tale of two tails. Ok, that was a poor pun – I’m sorry. But comets are a hot item now. First, there is the comet Pan-STARRS as seen above. This isn’t...
A Plan and a Story
OK, here’s my idea: We put a leash on Emmy and we put her up on top of this rock that’s on top of all these other rocks. Then she jumps down into these petals. so she’ll be safe. And you pull on the leash so she jumps down a little faster. I’m down here…
Modern Physics and Scientific Thinking
Yesterday’s big post on why I think people should embrace scientific thinking in a more conscious way than they do already (because my claim is that most people already use scientific thinking, they’re just not aware that they’re doing it) is clearly a kind of explanation of the reason behind my next book, but what…
Why Should You Think Like a Scientist?
As you may or may not know, I’m currently at work on a book called How to Think Like a Scientist. This raises the fairly obvious question in the post title, namely, why should people think like scientists? What’s the point? In a sense, this is (as Ethan Zuckerman pointed out at lunch the other…
Why, SteelyKid? What Are We Going to Do Tomorrow Night?
OK, Daddy, guess what? Here’s my idea. We get a stick of wood and we put a timer on it, then we get a big rock and put it on the end. We have to put feet on the big rock, so it can stand on the stick. Then when the rain comes down, down,…
Against Kaku-ism
I had lunch with Ethan Zuckerman yesterday, and we were talking about technology and communicating science to a mass audience, and Michio Kaku came up. Specifically, the fact that he’s prone to saying stuff that’s just flat wrong, if not batshit crazy– see this angry post from 2010 for an example. It was amusing, then,…
On College Matching
We’re entering the heart of College Admissions Season– the offers are out, and students are doing the high-stress decision thing– which means it’s time for the New York Times to begin their annual series of faintly awful reports on the state of academia. And right on cue, there’s this weekend’s article about poor students who…
The Problems of Science Media Are Not Unique
On Twitter and blogs, we’re having another round of complaints about sensationalism and hype in science stories– Matthew Francis and Gabrielle Rabinowitz are the latest to cross my social media feeds. I’ve also seen some stories recently (that I’m too lazy to dig up) complaining about the latest Higgs Boson stuff, and I’m sure if…
Outcomes
Well, I am coming to the end of the week of hiding away in this undisclosed coastal town, and I can report that it was very good for me. I managed to get enough immersion to work hard on one of the stories for The Project, and this morning I read it through (I actually broke it into two stories) and turned out to be not too bad so far. Show More Summary
The Existence of Nothing
The sold-out “debate” held Wednesday night here in New York is now available for viewing online, see here. I just watched most of it, and one of many things I couldn’t figure out is what if any propositions were being … Continue reading ?
Great minds lauded at physics prize ceremony
A crowd full of stars from the field of particle physics—along with one from Hollywood—celebrated recent achievements. “You can think of this as the Oscars, but instead of movie stars, you’re with the greatest minds in the world,” said...Show More Summary
Quantum Computing Since Democritus: The Buzz Intensifies
It seems like wherever I go these days, all anyone wants to talk about is Quantum Computing Since Democritus—the sprawling new book by Scott Aaronson, published by Cambridge University Press and available for order now. Among leading figures in quantum information science—many of them well-known to Shtetl-Optimized readers—the book is garnering the sort of hyperbolic [...]
The universe after Planck
Here's the 2013 version of the Mona Lisa of cosmology, or, in our jargon, the multipole expansion of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) power spectrum. Compared to previous experiments, what distinguishes Planck is that it measures the power spectrum all the way from the largest angular scales down to less than 0.1 degrees. Show More Summary
Planck reveals new insight into universe
The first cosmology results from the Planck satellite reveal an older universe populated with less dark energy and more matter than expected. This morning, scientists on the Planck space mission released the most detailed map yet of the afterglow of the big bang. Show More Summary
- 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
- Stephen Hawking
- CERN
- Brian Greene
- Sean Carroll
- Imperial College
- Scientific
