... woke up this morning to the news that, according to Stephen Hawking, God did not create the Universe but it was instead an “inevitable consequence of the Law of Physics”. By sheer coincidence this daft pronouncement has come out at the same time as the publication of Professor Hawking's new book, an extract of
Posted by In The Dark
... some aspect of medical science and how it touches our lives. This year the Scientist is Baroness Susan Greenfield, a renowned scientist and top notch communicator, I can promise that her talk will be fascinating. This year it's on how technology may be rewiring our brains. The lecture is 5:30-7:30 pm Bonython Hall,University of AdelaideNorth Terrace, AdelaideSouth
Posted by Astroblog
This image is stunning. And not just because, well, it's all explodey and stuff:[Click to explodenate.]The three panels show a 1986 test of a Tomahawk cruise missile. The missile traveled 640 km (400 mile) low over the terrain to detonate above the target, a decommissioned fighter plane. It's pretty clear the test was a success.
Posted by Bad Astronomy
I've been busy in August, and one of the things I've been working on has been out for a couple of weeks and I forgot to blog it. I've published a book. I haven't written a book, or edited it or anything requiring any academic input. I just worked on the publishing. The book is
Posted by AlunSalt: Ancient Science and the Science of Ancient Things
Crispian Jago makes completely transparent attempts to get linked from blogs. The thing is, he keeps doing spectacular stuff!This time it's a metro-subway-style map showing scientists of the past 400 or so years. It's wonderfully detailed! Here it is shrunk enough to fit on my meager 610-pixel wide blog:[Click to unsubwaynate and get the 2Mb
Posted by Bad Astronomy
Crispian Jago makes completely transparent attempts to get linked from blogs. The thing is, he keeps doing spectacular stuff!This time it's a metro-subway-style map showing scientists of the past 400 or so years. It's wonderfully detailed! Here it is shrunk enough to fit on my meager 610-pixel wide blog:[Click to unsubwaynate and get the 2Mb
Posted by Bad Astronomy
... Beyond Entropy art/science project (which I’ve described before). I took a vaporetto to the island of San Giorgio, and next to one of Venice’s more spectacular Palladian chu
Posted by Andrew Jaffe: Leaves on the Line
When I posted the awesome video of a fire tornado last week, I had only heard rumors of such things. Apparently, they're more common than I thought. Here's another amazing video, and this one is even better: it's longer, and you can see the rotating smoke cloud around the column of fire! This really is
Posted by Bad Astronomy
After I had started my post about the planning phase of the HST up to the start, I have noticed that the arguments (which I thought to be a small section in there) for building a Space Telescope in the first place took up quite some space, so I have decided to post this for
Posted by Galaxy Zoo Blog
Tweet Something radically new is in the air: new ways of understanding physical systems, new ways of thinking about thinking that call into question many of our basic assumptions. A realistic biology of the mind, advances in evolutionary biology, physics, information technology, genetics, neurobiology, psychology, engineering, the chemistry of materials: all are questions of critical
Posted by SarahAskew
The time is getting closer when the Condem government's hatchet men announce the detailed plans for spending cuts over the next few years. Those of us scientists working in British universities face an anxious few weeks waiting to see how hard the axe is going to fall. Funds for both teaching and research seem likely
Posted by In The Dark
... gave a tech talk at Google headquarters on the arrow of time, which was a lot of fun. Must be what all of Silicon Valley was like back in the boom days — pool tables, free food, volleyball, and lots of smart people everywhere. Rather than a lecture hall, the talks are
Posted by Cosmic Variance
Today, the total oil and natural gas production provides about 60 percent of global energy consumption. This percentage is expected to peak about 10 to 30 years from now, and then be followed by a rapid decline, due to declining oil reserves and, hopefully, sources of renewable energy that technologies that will become more economically
Posted by Universe Today
Want to know what it is like to bail out in near space and freefall 37 km (23 miles) to Earth? You´re about to find out. While no date has been announced yet for Felix Baumgartner´s attempt at breaking the speed of sound during freefall, when it does occur, everyone will be able to watch.
Posted by Universe Today
The Union of Concerned Scientists has launched a cool campaign to raise public awareness not just about global warming, but also about the attempts to confuse the public about it. The campaign features young scientists who study the climate, showing them as kids and talking about how they got started doing what they do. The
Posted by Bad Astronomy
... support skepticism and science, a few grassroots efforts could use some attention:A while back I wrote about James Dunbar's way cool comic book about cosmology called "Bang!". He's starting up production on a sequel about the origin of life and evolution, and is looking for some funding so he can keep
Posted by Bad Astronomy
did you know you could cool a gas with lasers? this sixty symbols video explains the process...(i didnt know there was such an intricate laser system here at the university of nottingham!) (also, the last line of this video is great ;)
Posted by astropixie
For tonight's post I thought I'd compose a commentary on a c0uple of connected controversies suggested by an interestingly provocative piece by Nigel Hawkes in the Independent this weekend entitled Peer Review journals aren't worth the paper they're written on. Here is an excerpt: The truth is that peer review is largely hokum. What happens
Posted by In The Dark
The NASA Earth-science satellite Earth Observing-1 has returned another amazing picture: the calving of Petermann Glacier off Greenland. The break happened on August 5, and this shot was taken 11 days later: The fjord is to the bottom, and the ice island that broke off is moving to the upper left. The picture is so
Posted by Bad Astronomy
As I predicted last week, the A-level results announced on Thursday showed another increase in pass rates and in the number of top grades awarded, although I had forgotten that this year saw the introduction of the new A* grade. Overall, about 27% of students got an A or an A*, although the number getting
Posted by In The Dark
... their education and science policies for the future. I received several responses - including from the Australian
Posted by Brains Matter
The recent US Decadal Survey (Astro2010) contains a conundrum. As part of the report, the Decadal Survey committee identified three key “scientific objectives” on which they felt the community should focus. These were:“Cosmic Dawn: Searching for the First Stars, Galaxies, and Black Holes”“New Worlds: Seeking Nearby, Habitable Planets”“Physics of the Universe: Understanding
Posted by Cosmic Variance
One of the biggest predictors of global warming is the retreat of sea ice in the high northern latitudes. As oceans warm, the ice will take longer to form in the winter, and retreat faster in the spring. Scientists, therefore, have been watching the ice north of Canada very carefully. What they're seeing isn't very hopeful.
Posted by Bad Astronomy
Apparently my Anime Mythbusters panel at Tokyo in Tulsa was recorded a few months ago. It's the same presentation I posted earlier that I gave at Naka Kon (as well as at Natsu Con more recently) so it's nothing new, but I always enjoy seeing how different audiences react as well as what crazy things I toss in off the top of my head. So if you want to see how it went, here's the videos:Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Sorry I'm dressed up funny. I'd been in costume that morning for pre-judging for t
Posted by Angry Astronomer
... — a frothingly antiscience and antireality website — and how it has a grotesquely wrong entry on Einstein's Relativity (as well as
Posted by Bad Astronomy
The big news this week in astrophysics is not the discovery of a new planet. Nor is it the first glimpse of a galaxy on the other side of the Universe. It's much more important: the arrival of the latest Decadal Report. It all started over a year ago, and fellow blogger Julianne has been
Posted by Cosmic Variance
Finding Pulsars with Your Home ComputerLast week the news hit the stands about a pulsar discovered in data being crunched by home computers. This little bit of serendipitous astronomy research was done using a distributed-computing progject program called Einstein@Home. It's a distributed data-crunching project that lets people devote duty cycles on their home computers to
Posted by TheSpacewriter's Ramblings
We have a curious situation in Australia. Members of society who commit offences can still be seen as heroes and end up in sporting Halls of Fame. All is forgiven in the name of sporting entertainment. And these individuals earn hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. If you walk up
Posted by Brains Matter
While we often envision future Martian colonies powered by solar, steam or nuclear power, one aspect we often neglect is the human rated rovers that will be criss crossing the planet. Fortunately it looks like technology developed on Earth may aid rover ranging explorers on Mars. The idea is to use the sun to power
Posted by Colony Worlds
Every decade, the US astronomy community gets its leaders together to write up a report on the state of the field and to recommend and rank major projects that should be supported by the government over the next decade. It's a blue print, a wish list and often also a sober exercise in what to
Posted by Galaxy Zoo Blog
The global astronomy community is buzzing this week after the publication at last of the Decadal Survey for Astronomy & Astrophysics by the US National Academy of Sciences, which will serve as a roadmap for US astronomy for the coming decade. Following a flurry of tweets and live blogs during the presentation of the report
Posted by SarahAskew
Who is Edwin Hubble, the guy who gave the Hubble Space Telescope its name? Who is the mysterious guy behind the telescope?Well, actually, Edwin Powell Hubble is not the ‘man behind the telescope' at all. He was born on 20th of November 1889 in the US and studied Physics and Astronomy in Chicago. He then,
Posted by Galaxy Zoo Blog
Every ten years or so, the US astronomy community, under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, produces a road map for the next decade's research in astronomy. The 2010 version, chaired by Roger Blandford, was just released, and astronomer/bloggers have already weighed in: Steinn Sigurðsson and Julianne Dalcanton (in two separate posts on the ground- and space-based recommendations), along with the UK's Andy Lawrence and Peter Coles have already dissected the report, but I'll re
Posted by Andrew Jaffe: Leaves on the Line
[Apologies to those of you who may have seen an inadvertantly-published unfinished version of this post]I've just returned from a week at the Annual meeting of the Institute for Mathematical Statistics in Gothenburg, Sweden. It's always instructive to go to meetings outside of one's specialty, outside of the proverbial comfort zone. I've been in my own field long enough that I'm used to feeling like one of the popular kids, knowing and being known by most of my fellow cosmologists -- it's a good
Posted by Andrew Jaffe: Leaves on the Line
... from the public on any science-related topic, Dr Chris Smith of Cambridge University responds in innovative, informative and sometimes hilarious ways. A medical doc
Posted by Astroblog
On to the ground-based (i. e. NSF funded) recommendations (for large, new projects — i. e., not including on-going investments in ALMA; there are a number of interesting medium scale projects recommended, but I probably won't have time to get to them). First priority was the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) — a survey for a multi-color, multi-cadence
Posted by Cosmic Variance
So, the Decadal Survey (”Astro2010″) results are out. I missed the webcast (which I heard was of pretty sketchy quality), but read Roger Blandford's slides, and have skimmed or read a reasonable fraction of the preliminary report. Here's my summary and first reactions, broken down by regime. Steinn has also been blogging
Posted by Cosmic Variance
The US astronomical community is anxiously awaiting tomorrow's press conference on the release of the “Astro2010 Decadal Survey”. Now, the astronomical community has press releases all the time, but almost all are about communicating scientific results or images to the general public. Tomorrow's is different. What we learn will shape the next
Posted by Cosmic Variance
Professor Richard Wassersug is from the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology from Dalhousie University in Canada. Much of his research and study was and is in the area of herpetology, or the study of amphibians. I talked to Professor Wassersug about herpetology, and the importance of understanding this area of biology. Topics
Posted by Brains Matter
... lucked out with the weather for one day of the weekend and managed to hike to some of the highest peaks in wales, without sitting inside clouds at the top! while i thoroughly enjoyed the "scramble" to the top, i must admit i'm so sore today that it was slightly painful to drink my coffee this morning ;) coincidentally, brady happened to be on the same mountain range this weekend shooting some footage, not for sixty symbols, but for the periodic table of videos! they chose to climb on saturd
Posted by astropixie
... Last week I posted a nice photo of a nudibranch I found off of Puak. I identified the animal as Dendrodoris rubra based on an entry in Hoover's Hawai'i's Sea Creatures, the best layman's guide to local invertebrates. I also submitted the photo to NudiPixel, a website that has a wonderful collection of nudibranch photos submitted by divers from across the world's oceans. They identified the species as Dendrodoris fumata, a closely related species found throughout
Posted by A Darker View
Over at Respectful Insolence Orac has discussed the misrepresentation of a study about the effect of fructose on pancreatic cancer. This post is a slightly expanded version of that comment, with some added diagrams and a bit more on fructose concentrations. The point is still that the press release (that limiting fructose intake may disrupt cancer growth), and some of the conclusions of the paper, are not justifyable from the data. First, a little background. Sugar to most people is sucrose, or c
Posted by Astroblog
What the Keck telescope can see and the Sloan telescope can´t are the two red smudges in the blue glow of the Quasar. These smudges are in fact one Pea gravitationally lensed by the QSO sitting in front of it!
Posted by Galaxy Zoo Blog
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