Now on ScienceBlogs: Will Quantum Fusion Save the Day?
The Power of Admitting "I'm Wrong" "Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so." -Mark Twain "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment,...
My New Favorite Review of How to Teach [Quantum] Physics to Your Dog My Google vanity search for my name and the book titles is really frustratingly spotty, often missing things in major news outlets that I later find by other means. For example, I didn't get a notification about this awesome review...
Another Week of GW News, April 15, 2012 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup...
Bob Madigan - WTOP's "Man About Town" Broadcasts from a Nifty Fifty Presentation! Rockville High School in Rockville, MD was visited by Dr. April Croxton, Marine Biologist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Dr. Croxton is one of the AT&T; Sponsored Nifty Fifty X 2 Speakers WTOP's "Man About Town" Bob Madigan was on hand to broadcast Dr. Croxton's presentation and even catch some student comments about this inspiring event.
Down the barrel of a thousand cosmic cannons! "If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" -Albert Einstein Our galaxy is but one among hundreds of billions in the cosmos, nearly all of which contain supermassive black holes at...
Ten Years Before the Blog: 2002-2003 As threatened a little while ago, this is the first of ten hopefully weekly posts looking back at the ten years this blog has been in operation. This one covers the period from the very first post on June 22,...
A Night of Celestial Excitement: Join Us April 28 at the Stargazing Party! Under the guidance of some of the top astronomy experts in the country, explore our amazing Universe - including up close views of the Earth's moon, Jupiter and other mysterious planetary objects - at the Stargazing Party, an exciting educational collaboration between the Festival, the Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum (NASM), telescope manufacturer Celestron and other partners, on Saturday, April 28 at NASM in Washington, DC.
Jennifer Lawrence channels Katniss, says "Screw PETA" In it's increasingly bizarre need to inflict it's animal rights morality on everybody, PETA's Ingrid Newkirk has criticized Jennifer Lawrence...
Why So Many Books About Quanta? I'm re-instituting the quota system for the moment-- no blogging until I make some substantive progress on the current work-in-progress-- but I'll throw out a quick post here to note a media appearance: Physics World has a podcast about books...
Scam Publisher Fools Swedish Cranks Can anybody publish anything in SCIRP's International Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics as long as they pay the fee?
The Whole Universe from One Satellite's Eyes "We were left with a picture of part of the sky with no stars or galaxies, but it still had this infrared glow with giant blobs that we think could be the glow from the very first stars." -John Mather...
The Electric Life of Michael Faraday by Alan Hirshfeld A passing mention in last week's post about impostors and underdogs got me thinking about Michael Faraday again, and I went looking for a good biography of him. The last time looked, I didn't find any in electronic form, probably...
"Science, Danger, and Progress" a Talk by Featured Author William Gurstelle The USA Science and Engineering Festival will really heat up when Popular Science and Make Magazine writer William Gurstelle speaks at the Family/Hands-on Science Stage on Sunday morning. Gurstelle, who wrote the bestselling DIY science book Backyard Ballistics, will be reading from his newest book, The Practical Pyromaniac. The book is a hands-on guidebook to playing with fire and narrates the story of humankind's long-coming understanding of the most important chemical reaction on the planet.
Another Week of GW News, April 8, 2012 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup...
A Brief History of Timekeeping: Final Notes Between unpleasant work stuff and the Dread Stomach Bug wiping out the better part of five days, I only got my student evaluation comments for my winter term class last week, and I'm only getting around to writing the post-mortem...
Meet the Next 5 of the Top 20 Finalists for the Kavli Video Contest! Vote for "The People's Choice Award"! The Kavli Science Video Contest has wrapped up with over 260 entries! Now it's time for the People's Choice Vote, in advance of the awards ceremony on April 29, in Washington, DC, as part of the USA Science & Engineering Festival. People's Choice Voting begins April 2 and closes April 13. Voting is easy, just view the videos on YouTube and click 'like" for your favorites. Click here to view the videos.
When supernovae get too big! "You cannot, in human experience, rush into the light. You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day before the noon comes and the full sun is upon the landscape." -Woodrow Wilson Without a doubt, one of the...
How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog: A Review Is In I'm trying not to be Neurotic Author Guy and obsessively check online reviews of How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog every fifteen minutes. I've actually been pretty successful at it, so successful that I didn't notice the first...
Explorers in Our Midst: What the James Cameron Voyage Can Tell Us In our world of high-tech bravado, I often wonder where we'd be without explorers -- those undaunted heroes and heroines of the past and of today whose achievements, like an unforgettable song or movie -- form a lasting impression in the brain over what the human spirit can accomplish with will and perseverance.
...But What If There Was More Time? "Well you run and you run to catch up with the Sun but it's sinking, racing around to come up behind you again. The Sun is the same in a relative way but you're older, shorter of breath and one...
Meet the Next 5 of the Kavli Science Video Contest Top 20 Finalists - Now Who will Win the "People's Choice" Vote? The Kavli Science Video Contest has wrapped up with over 260 entries! Now it's time for the People's Choice Vote, in advance of the awards ceremony on April 29, in Washington, DC, as part of the USA Science & Engineering Festival. People's Choice Voting begins April 2 and closes April 13. Voting is easy, just view the videos on YouTube and click 'like" for your favorites. Click here to view the videos.
The Story of the One Little Pig, the Nice Wolf, and Materials Science I want a story. The story about one little pig, and the wolf. I'll need you to help me with it, OK? Yeah. OK, once upon a time, there was one little pig, and he... What did he do? He...
Poll: Most Important Part of Physics? Over in Twitterland, we have a question from WillyB: If you had to pick one topic to cover in Physics, which do you think is the most important for the gen. public? This sounds like a job for the Internet!...
The Festival Expo Map is Ready to View! Start Planning for Your Festival Weekend Today! We are excited to share the news that the 2012 USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo Map is out! The Festival will run from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM on Saturday, April 28th and from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM on Sunday, April 29th. We will also host free evening shows including the Stargazing Party and our Featured Author Panel Discussion both on Saturday night. The "Largest Celebration of Science" will take place this year in Washington, DC at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.
Why Haven't We Discovered the Higgs yet? "...the publisher wouldn't let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing." -Leon Lederman, author of The God Particle The Higgs Boson: you know...
“That's why helium recycling is important. If I don't recycle my aluminum can, the problem isn't that we lose the aluminum from the earth, it's just that it will take more energy to get those atoms back into a useful form than if I recycled it. If I don't recycle my helium (and my guess is most users don't), the atoms eventually leave the planet.” Anonymous Coward on Why is Helium so Scarce?
Orac 04.13.2012
PZ Myers 06.17.2009
Orac 04.30.2012
Tim Lambert 09.12.2011
ERV 11.26.2011
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Some engineers use cranes and steel to make their designs reality, but synthetic biologists engineer using tools on a different scale: DNA and the other molecular components of living cells. Synthetic biology uses cellular systems and structures to produce artificial models based on natural order. Read these posts from the ScienceBlogs archives for more:
Pharyngula May 30, 2007
The Loom January 31, 2008
Discovering Biology in a Digital World July 2, 2006