First, Minute Physics takes a shot at explaining what the BICEP2 team actually found and how it relates to gravitational waves. I think I'm going to have to watch this a second time to pick up everything. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IlBNJbCzfk And Ethan Siegel has an in-depth discussion of cosmic inflation at his Starts With A Bang site.
Tag: Science
The difference between life and machine
Addy Pross has an interesting post up at HuffPost looking at what actually makes life...life. Most of us recognize that there is a fundamental difference between mechanical objects designed and created by man, no matter how sophisticated, and the naturally derived complexity of living things. In fact, my granddaughter, when she was just 2, already … Continue reading The difference between life and machine
First Direct Evidence of Cosmic Inflation – SpaceRef
Wow! There were lots of rumors about this over the weekend. Turns out that, in this case, the rumors were spot on. Almost 14 billion years ago, the universe we inhabit burst into existence in an extraordinary event that initiated the Big Bang. In the first fleeting fraction of a second, the universe expanded exponentially, … Continue reading First Direct Evidence of Cosmic Inflation – SpaceRef
Top 10 scientists of the 13th century | Science News
One of the things I used to think was that the scientific revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries was a revolution of method, that before that period the scientific method either didn't exist or was not yet complete. But I realized last year that the revolution was really more of an acceleration of progress … Continue reading Top 10 scientists of the 13th century | Science News
Forgetting is important
I've noted before that our memories corrupt over time, and that we're constantly forgetting things. All things we should try to...remember when recalling events or evaluating eyewitness testimony. Anyway, it turns out that if something goes wrong with our forgetting mechanism, it has serious consequences. In order to function properly, the human brain requires the … Continue reading Forgetting is important
Why the Asteroid Belt Doesn’t Threaten Spacecraft
When Cosmos showed the asteroid belt Sunday night, I noticed that, taking some artistic license to quickly get a point across, they showed it as crammed with asteroids. Anyone familiar with the real asteroid belt knows that's not accurate. Even in the belt, asteroids are lonely rocks. When you think of the asteroid belt, you … Continue reading Why the Asteroid Belt Doesn’t Threaten Spacecraft
Credible and baseless concerns about AI
I caught James Barrat on CSPAN BookTV Saturday evening, talking about his book, 'Our Final Invention', the main theme of which appears to be that we're in danger of designing intelligent machines, won't be able to control them, and that will be the end of us. One of my earliest posts on this blog was on … Continue reading Credible and baseless concerns about AI
Epigenetics: The sins of the father
A while back I linked to a BBC story on the discovery that mice could pass on a learned fear of certain smells to their descendants. This is an almost Lamarckian observation, one that may indicate that the long discredited scientific theory of acquired traits being inheritable may have had a glimmer of truth. This … Continue reading Epigenetics: The sins of the father
50 Science Misconceptions
I have to admit that a few of these were news to me, such as that hens can lay eggs without roosters, or that pterodactyls were not dinosaurs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqaDf2fuUH8 via Machines Like Us.
What is Color? — Starts With A Bang! — Medium
This article is Ethan Siegel's response to Alan Alda's challenge to explain color in 300 words of less. He meets that challenge, albeit with a lot of visual aids. It’s one of our most common experiences, and we all know it when we see it. But what, exactly, is color? Where does it come from, … Continue reading What is Color? — Starts With A Bang! — Medium
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