Astronomy:
When I was talking to my parents on the phone last night, my father told me about a guest op-ed in the Press and Sun-Bulletin that might be of interest to some ScienceBlogs readers and bloggers: As if there aren't...
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Posted on April 7, 2008 8:12 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
An email pointer leads to a good video about the latest in Search[ing] for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.
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Posted on April 2, 2008 9:18 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The coolest-sounding science news of the moment is undoubtedly "Hubble Finds First Organic Molecule on an Exoplanet"" NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has made the first detection ever of an organic molecule in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting...
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Posted on March 20, 2008 7:28 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Paul Krugman is now a famour economist, but many years ago, he was "an oppressed assistant professor, caught up in the academic rat race." So, he did what any good academic would do in that situation: he wrote a silly...
Posted on March 15, 2008 12:21 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Physics World has an interview with Alastair Reynolds, who was trained as an astrophysicist but is now a full-time SF author: How does your physics training help with your writing? Less than people imagine. I think the most important attribute...
Posted on December 4, 2007 3:36 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Via email, a plug for the newish site 60 Second Science, which is a project from Scientific American built around a podcast featuring one-minute explanations of, well, science. The email was specifically highlighting their new project, a set of video...
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Posted on November 15, 2007 10:41 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Big results from the Pierre Auger Observatory.
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Posted on November 9, 2007 9:20 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There's a reason why "rocket science" is the paradigm of difficulty, and it's not the math, which is just vector calculus.
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Posted on September 27, 2007 10:23 AM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Physics World has a somewhat puzzling news article about the solar system: Physicists have known for some time that the motions of Pluto and the inner planets are chaotic. This means that a small external force on a planet could,...
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Posted on September 26, 2007 6:52 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I'm in a Department of Physics and Astronomy, so several of my colleagues are astronomers. We also have a rather nice on-campus observatory, used for student research projects. Unfortunately, the combination means that we have a running argument with the...
Posted on September 20, 2007 9:08 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Speaking of science explanations in SF, or at least science explained by SF authors, there's a very nice history of dark matter at SFNovelists.com by Mark Brotherton (via Tobias Buckell): The story of dark matter starts back in the 1930s...
Posted on September 15, 2007 9:57 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I remember the last time I saw the milky way. I was at my aunt's house in the foothills of the Sierras, and late at night the dense river of stars emerges. But that is still not the true milky...
Posted on September 8, 2007 6:40 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
If you're on the west coast tonight and are willing to stay up late or wake up early, you have the chance to see the Aurigid meteor shower. This shower is fairly unique because it arises from a comet with...
Posted on August 31, 2007 9:39 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
For those of you willing to stay up late, there will be a total eclipse of the moon on August 28 visible to various extents over most of the western hemisphere and some of east Asia. The show is a...
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Posted on August 25, 2007 7:33 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I am sorry to report the passing of Ralph Alpher, of the famous "Alpher-Bethe-Gamow" paper. I don't know many details, but he's been in poor health for some time, so this is sad but not surprising news. Ralph Alpher was...
Posted on August 13, 2007 7:59 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There's a new paper in Nature announcing the detection of water vapor in the atmosphere of a "hot Jupiter" orbiting a distant star. There's also a story on Physics Web and a press release from the Spitzer Telescope group, if...
Posted on July 12, 2007 8:52 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
"Prof. Orzel gives the impression of an everyday guy who just happens to have a vast but hidden knowledge of physics." (anonymous student evaluation comment)
