The article about physicists in movies cited previously had one other thing worth commenting on: the fictional portrayal of the practice of science: All these films illustrate a fundamental pattern for movie science. Rarely is the central scientific concept utterly incorrect, but filmmakers are obviously more interested in creating entertaining stories that sell tickets than… Continue reading Fictional Science
Category: Science
Classic Edition: Stronger Than Old Hapless Gods
I was scheduled for a deeply unpleasant medical test yesterday, which I thought was going to leave me lots of time for blogging. yesterday afternoon and this morning. The preliminary test turned out to be so unpleasant (if anybody ever offers to stick a tube through your nose into your stomach, decline politely) that I… Continue reading Classic Edition: Stronger Than Old Hapless Gods
You Might Be a Scientist If…
An open thread comment over at Making Light triggered a discussion of what words and phrases could serve as reliable markers of SF fandom. (It continues for a good while, but at times is nearly buried in discussion of Japanese knotweed.). This got me to wondering about what phrases would serve as similar markers for… Continue reading You Might Be a Scientist If…
Shaw Prize in Astronomy
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
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
Science and Religion Update
I’m not about to stay up all night to post to every channel on the front page, but I will make a brief appearance in the “Culture Wars” channel, not my usual space, to note two science and religion items: 1) Rob Knop offers lecture slides on the scientific method, and the difference between scientific… Continue reading Science and Religion Update
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
Bored by the Landscape
The big event of the moment in physics, at least on the high energy/ theory side, is the Strings 2006 meeting in Beijing, which will feature the usual suspects talking about the usual topics in string theory. This comes on the heels of the SUSY06 meeting, which was extensively blogged by Clifford and others. This… Continue reading Bored by the Landscape
Diversity in Science
Inside Higher Ed has an article today on a study of career tracks that found markedly different results for different ethnic groups. This ought to be interesting data for the endless debates about diersity in science hiring, especially this tidbit: Asian doctorates – 51 percent of them – are far and away the most likely… Continue reading Diversity in Science
Simulate This
Rob Knop has another post to which I can only say “Amen!”, this time on the relatioship between simulation and experiment (in response to this BoingBoing post about a Sandia press release): Can simulations show us things that experiments cannot? Absolutely! In fact, if they didn’t, we wouldn’t bother doing simulations. This has been true… Continue reading Simulate This