Category: Physics

Particle Fever and Modern Art

As mentioned last week, I was the on-hand expert for the Secret Science Club’s foray into Massachusetts, a screening of the movie Particle Fever held at MASS MoCA. This worked out nicely in a lot of respects– it gave me an excuse to visit the newly renovated Clark Art Institute in Williamstown and check out… Continue reading Particle Fever and Modern Art

Uncertain Dots 25: The Lightning Round

I got the time for the regular hangout wrong, and then we had some weird computer difficulties, so we only had ten minutes for Uncertain Dots this week. Which was enough time for me to say disparaging things about comic book movies, so, you know, if that interests you… Here’s the making of Interstellar story… Continue reading Uncertain Dots 25: The Lightning Round

On Not Talking, for the Right Reasons

Over at Backreaction, Bee has a nice piece on our current age of virality. Toward the end, she discusses some of the ways this applies to science, specifically a quote from this Nature article about collaborative efforts to measure “big G”, and a story about a Chinese initiative to encourage collaboration. She writes of the… Continue reading On Not Talking, for the Right Reasons

Particle Physics in Western Mass.

That’s “Mass” as in Massachusetts, not the stuff associated with the Higgs field… specifically, North Adams, MA, where I’ll be this Saturday night, October 25th, at the Secret Science Club screening of Particle Fever. This will be at the MASS MoCA, tickets here. The Secret Science Club is a regular gathering in New York City… Continue reading Particle Physics in Western Mass.

John Stewart Bell Prize: Nominations Wanted

In odd-numbered years (by the Gregorian calendar, anyway), the University of Toronto offers the John Stewart Bell Prize for Research on Fundamental Issues in Quantum Mechanics and Their Applications. This is not connected to the Jon Stewart of the Daily Show– he’s purely classical, as you can tell from the fact that there’s no “h”… Continue reading John Stewart Bell Prize: Nominations Wanted

Entangled States at TED-Ed

Screen shot from the TED-Ed video on entangled state.

The fourth video I wrote for TED-Ed is now live: Einstein’s Brilliant Mistake: Entangled States. The title is not just an Elvis Costello reference, but gets at the fact that while the Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen paper was wrong in that the local hidden variable theories they favored are impossible, it turned out to be… Continue reading Entangled States at TED-Ed

The Copernicus Complex by Caleb Scharf

Book cover for The Copernicus Complex by Caleb Scharf.

I enjoyed Caleb Scharf’s previous book, Gravity’s Engines a good deal, so I was happy to get email from a publicist offering me his latest. I’m a little afraid that my extreme distraction of late hasn’t really treated it fairly, but then again, the fact that I finished it at all in my current state… Continue reading The Copernicus Complex by Caleb Scharf

Schrödinger’s Cat at TED-Ed

Screenshot of the Schrodinger cat video I wrote for TED-Ed

The third of the videos I wrote for TED-Ed is now live: Schrödinger’s Cat: A Thought Experiment in Quantum Mechanics.This is using basically the same argument I outlined in this post, but with awesome animation courtesy of Agota Vegso. I’m impressed by how close the images that ended up in the video are to the… Continue reading Schrödinger’s Cat at TED-Ed

Relativity and Baseball

A baseball deforming as it hits the bat of Miguel Cabrera, from NESN.

It’s baseball playoff time, so sport shows are full of one of the great mysteries of the season, exemplified by this .gif (from SBNation): No, not “Raul Ibanez, really?” but “How can he make the ball go that far?” After all, even very good outfielders are lucky to reach home plate with a throw from… Continue reading Relativity and Baseball