Category: Science

038/366: Cloudy Conjunction

Shots of the Moon and Venus from yesterday (left) and today (right).

In yesterday’s crude astrophotography post, I mentioned that the conjunction of Venus and the Moon would be closer this morning, but I took a shot of it yesterday because there’s no telling with the weather here this time of year. When I first went outside this morning, though, the sky was beautiful and clear and… Continue reading 038/366: Cloudy Conjunction

027/366: #SuperBloodMoon

SteelyKid looking at the eclipse through her telescope.

Really, was there any question at all what the subject of today’s photo would be? I mean, I’m a geek, I have a fancy camera– of course I was taking pictures of the lunar eclipse. But more importantly, I was sharing it with SteelyKid: That’s SteelyKid looking through her telescope at the early stages of… Continue reading 027/366: #SuperBloodMoon

014/366: Summer Stars

Stars from the backyard at Chateau Steelypips.

Today was Rosh Hashanah– happy new year to those who celebrate it– meaning that both SteelyKid’s school and The Pip’s day care were closed. In an effort to maintain my sanity while keeping them entertained, I took them to the local science museum to rampage through hands-on exhibits. We also caught the planetarium show, because… Continue reading 014/366: Summer Stars

002/366: Boids

Two birds on our backyard feeder; not sure of the species.

I spent a while this morning typing on my laptop on the deck, and brought the new camera out with me for occasional procrastination. The shady spot at that hour has a nice view of the bird feeder, and I snapped a few shots of these guys feeding (using a telephoto lens): (I cropped and… Continue reading 002/366: Boids

Physics Blogging Round-Up: Two Weeks’ Worth

I forgot to do this last week, because I was busy preparing for SteelyPalooza on Saturday, but here are links to my recent physics posts over at Forbes: — What ‘Ant-Man’ Gets Wrong About The Real Quantum Realm: On the way home from the Schrödinger Sessions, I had some time to kill so I stopped… Continue reading Physics Blogging Round-Up: Two Weeks’ Worth

Science Talks and Pick-Up Hoops

Over in Tumblr-land, Ben Lillie has an interesting post on all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes of a science talk. It’s an intimidatingly long list of stuff, in quite a range of different areas. But this is a solved problem in other performance fields: And that raises and interesting question, since aside… Continue reading Science Talks and Pick-Up Hoops

Seven Years of SteelyKid

SteelyKid with her new telescope.

Today is SteelyKid’s seventh birthday, which she’s been counting down to for a good while. It’s a little hard to believe it’s seven years since she was substantially smaller than her stuffed Appa toy. She’s become quite a handful in that time, with boundless energy apparently derived from photosynthesis (since she hardly eats anything), and… Continue reading Seven Years of SteelyKid

Back-of-the-Envelope Gravitational Which-Way

There’s a new Science Express paper on interfering clocks today, which is written up in Physics World, with comments from yours truly. The quote is from a much longer message I sent– with no expectation that it would end up as anything other than a pull quote, I might add, but I thought the background… Continue reading Back-of-the-Envelope Gravitational Which-Way

The Schrödinger Sessions: Science for Science Fiction

Attendees and some presenters at the Schrodinger Sessions.

Last weekend was our APS-funded outreach workshop The Schrödinger Sessions: Science for Science Fiction, held at the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland. The workshop offered a three-day “crash course” on quantum physics to 17 science fiction writers from a variety of media– we had novelists, short-story writers, screenwriters, and at least one… Continue reading The Schrödinger Sessions: Science for Science Fiction