June 2009
43 posts
May 2009
26 posts
“In contrast to the solar system, where the sun is some 10 times the diameter of...”
– Dedicated star-trackers turn up a big planet around a tiny star: Scientific American Blog
The Ultimate 'Fridge Magnet' | London blog on the... →
Refrigeration using magnets rather than a vapor cycle (i.e., the same principals that make aerosol cans feel cold when you use them) makes for a huge jump in efficiency. Excuse the pun, but this is cool. Now we just have to find cheaper materials to do it with.
In Hot Pursuit of Fusion (or Folly) | NYTimes →
The National Ignition Facility, set to go online this week, will fuse hydrogen into helium, “releasing bursts of thermonuclear energy” (like stars). But, more importantly: the world’s most powerful laser!
Unreasonable effectiveness | Plus magazine →
I really like this article about how physics and math interact and drive each other. I think it also really illuminates how research that seems pointless and irrelevant can turn out to be incredibly important.
Geek Pop →
The world’s only virtual science and music festival. Pretty neat.
“Although a majority of the responding women physicists said they would choose physics again, a majority also reported being discouraged about physics. Many spoke about negative interaction with colleagues, including many stories about discriminatory attitudes.”
(Source: 2005 AIP survey of women in physics)
I looked this up after noticing that a majority of my followers here (not...
What makes so academic laboratories such dangerous... →
Time Travel in Flatland →
A neat little site about relativity that explains how gravity and time travel would work in 2-dimensional (as opposed to our 3-dimensional) space. It’s a good way to start to try to wrap your mind around relativity.
“After my father gave up on engineering, he said, ‘How about we compromise and go...”
– Murray Gell-Mann, winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics
The Man Who Found Quarks and Made Sense of the Universe
Making Ice Cream with Liquid Nitrogen - The... →
“I’m glad tumblr didn’t exist when I was working as a clerk in the patent office....”
– Albert Einstein
(via)
BA Review: Star Trek | Bad Astronomy | Discover... →
I’ll admit I was never a big fan of the original Star Trek. I watched TNG and Voyager (never got into DS9) with my dad as a kid, but never saw the movies. I did go see the movie over the weekend, though, and thoroughly enjoyed it as long as I kept the sciencey part of my brain turned off. Pretty much everything having to do with supernovae and black holes was, uh…far-fetched would...
Wolfram|Alpha →
It’s up.
YouStupidRelativist.com →
At first I thought it was a joke. But I read part of the introduction and some of it sounded familiar. When I taught the astronomy lab in college (astro was basically a course for freshman liberal arts majors to fulfill their science requirement), I actually had a couple of students say things like “I don’t believe in equations.” I thought it was arrogant kids trying to...
“Warp drive or hyperdrive is a main stay of science fiction but there is current...”
– Technology inspired by science fiction 