We had a talk last night by Alan Lightman of MIT, a theoretical physicist and novelist, best known as the author of Einstein’s Dreams. He spoke for about an hour about his own background, and the similarities and differences between the worlds of science and the arts. One of the differences he mentioned was the… Continue reading The Art and Science of Naming Things
Category: Science
I Do Not Think That Means What You Think It Means
A couple of physics stories in the last few days have caught my attention for reasons that can be lumped together under the Vizzini Effect– that is, they say things that involve unconventional uses of common words. Take, for example, the Physics World story Physicists distinguish between the indistinguishable, which starts off: Spurred on by… Continue reading I Do Not Think That Means What You Think It Means
Testing the Fine Structure Constant: The More Things Change, the More They Don’t
Via the arxiv Blog, a review article has been posted by the Haensch group with the title“Testing the Stability of the Fine Structure Constant in the Laboratory.” The fine structure constant, usually referred to by the symbol α is a ratio of fundamental constants– the electron charge squared divded by Planck’s Contant times the speed… Continue reading Testing the Fine Structure Constant: The More Things Change, the More They Don’t
Transporting Ions Through an X-Junction: Quantum Computing Inches Closer
Physics World has a nice news article about a new experimental development in quantum computing, based on a forthcoming paper from the Wineland group at NIST in Boulder. I’d write this up for ResearchBlogging, but it’s still just on the arxiv, and I don’t think they’ve started accepting arxiv papers yet. The Physics World piece… Continue reading Transporting Ions Through an X-Junction: Quantum Computing Inches Closer
Academic Poll: Uniqueness
A recurring problem in academic science is trying to correctly identify a single author. For example, I was reviewing a grant that made reference to a group, but not a specific paper, and needed to sift through a few pages of search results in order to determine which of the people with that surname was… Continue reading Academic Poll: Uniqueness
Academic Poll: Person and Voice
Over at Faraday’s Cage, Cherish has had a Huck Finn moment with regard to paper writing style: I know that I’m not supposed to use the first person plural when writing papers. Frankly Scarlet, I don’t give a damn. I am going to say, “we did this” and “we did that”. This made me blink… Continue reading Academic Poll: Person and Voice
More Is Difficult
I’ve remarked several times that I think condensed matter physics gets slighted in public discussions of the field, especially relative to its usefulness. Particle physics gets all sorts of press, but in practical terms, it is essentially useless– whether CERN or Fermilab locate the Higgs boson or not will make absolutely no difference in the… Continue reading More Is Difficult
Beware of Undead Astronomers
My bedtime reading last night was an old pop-science book by Isaac Asimov, about black holes and astronomy generally. He talks at some length about the size and age of the universe, and just before I stopped and went to sleep last night, I reached his discussion of Cepheid variables, which begins thus: In 1784… Continue reading Beware of Undead Astronomers
How to Make the World Safe for Science
Over at the Intersection’s new digs, Sheril has posted a rather long list of fellowship programs for people interested in science policy. Sponsors include government agencies, private universities, professional societies, and private foundations, and cover pretty much every branch of science. If you’d like to take a look inside the sausage factory and spend some… Continue reading How to Make the World Safe for Science
Matter and Interactions and Dark Matter for Kids
New ScienceBlogger and American Gladiator Ethan Siegel of Starts With a Bang has a couple of nice posts about dark matter and how we know it’s there (one, two). These posts reminded me that I never did follow up on the discussion following my post about Magic World Media, who are looking to publish kids’… Continue reading Matter and Interactions and Dark Matter for Kids