Via Cosmic Variance, news of the Shaw Prize in Astronomy for 2006: Saul Perlmutter, Adam Riess, and Brian Schmidt are awarded the Shaw Prize in Astronomy 2006 in recognition of their leadership roles on the two teams that made the remarkable discovery of an acceleration in the rate of the expansion of the universe. Such… Continue reading Shaw Prize in Astronomy
Category: In the News
Stringamathing
I’ve got a grant proposal to review, and a progress report to write for one of my own grants, so you’re getting short, link-y physics blogging: – The Strings 2006 conference has ended, with the participants apparently deciding to keep up with this “string theory” thing (maybe you’ve heard of it?) for a little while… Continue reading Stringamathing
The Future… And Beyond!
It’s almost finished now, so this is a little late in being posted, but the Washington Post has been running a week-long series of on-line chats with noted “futurists,” under the title Beyond the Future. I’m a little dubious about most “futurism,” but reading about people’s predictions for future trends and gadgets can be a… Continue reading The Future… And Beyond!
Stringy Links
For those interested in keeping abreast of the latest stuff on string theory and its discontents, some links: Jonathan Shock is based in Beijing, and blogging about the Strings 2006 meeting. He’s got a first-day recap including descriptions of several of the talks, and incident events. Victor Rivelles is also blogging from Beijing, and has… Continue reading Stringy Links
Martian Balloons
There’s a piece in the New York Times this morning about a German project to send a balloon-borne rover to Mars that’s got a little something for everyone. It’s a Mars mission, which never gets old, but it’s also a privately financed project, and thus a nice demonstration of the power of private enterprise, for… Continue reading Martian Balloons
Falling Rock Zone
Large meteorite hits northern Norway: A large meteorite struck in northern Norway this week, landing with an impact an astronomer compared to the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima. The meteorite appeared as a ball of fire just after 2 a.m. Wednesday, visible across several hundred miles in the sunlit summer sky above the Arctic Circle,… Continue reading Falling Rock Zone
Next: Pot-Bellied Elephants
Look– miniature dinosaurs! OK, fine, they’re not that small: These “dwarf” dinosaurs were slightly longer and heavier than a car, Sander said. “They stopped growing when they reached 6 metres [20 feet] in length and a ton in body mass,” he estimated. Their brachiosaur cousins, by contrast, were up to 45 metres (148 feet) long… Continue reading Next: Pot-Bellied Elephants
Outlaw Physics
PZ notes and article about a controversial physics demonstration: Every year, physics teacher David Lapp brings his Korean War era M-1 carbine to school, fires a shot into a block of wood and instructs his students to calculate the velocity of the bullet. It is a popular experiment at Mill Valley’s Tamalpais High School, where… Continue reading Outlaw Physics
Ray Davis Dead at 91
The post title pretty much says it. Raymond Davis Jr., who shared the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his work on detecting neutrinos, died Wednesday. The Times obituatary showed up in my RSS feeds today. Davis got his dynamite money for the neutrino detection experiment that he ran for years in the Homestake mine, where… Continue reading Ray Davis Dead at 91
Open the Pod Bay Doors, Hal
There’s an interesting story in the Times this morning about efforts to make robotic space probes more autonomous. The idea is that it would be nice to be able to explore the Solar System without the big delays introduced by light-speed communications lags. In the absence of an ansible, autonomous robots are the best way… Continue reading Open the Pod Bay Doors, Hal