Remembering V.I. Arnold, 1937-2010
From Jennifer Ouellette
A mathematician in Soviet Russia
Leave a reply
Monthly Archives: July 2012
Comic Book Physics
Don’t tell Darth Vader
From the “Be careful what you wish for” files
Why Amazon Wants To Pay Sales Tax
How Amazon’s ambitious new push for same-day delivery will destroy local retail.
Physical retailers have long argued that once Amazon plays fairly on taxes, the company wouldn’t look like such a great deal to most consumers. If prices were equal, you’d always go with the “instant gratification” of shopping in the real world. The trouble with that argument is that shopping offline isn’t really “instant”—it takes time to get in the car, go to the store, find what you want, stand in line, and drive back home.
Dark matter
Without honor in his own country
Higgs boson physicist shunned in Pakistan
Adbus Salam, who died in 1996, was once hailed as a national hero for his pioneering work in physics and his contribution to Pakistan’s nuclear programme. Now his name is stricken from school textbooks because he was a member of the Ahmadi sect that has been persecuted by the government and targeted by Taliban militants, who view them as heretics.
Officials at Quaid-i-Azam University had to cancel plans for Salam to lecture about his Nobel-winning theory when Islamist student activists threatened to break the physicist’s legs, said his colleague Hoodbhoy.
America just endured its hottest 12 month period on record.
People of the Higgs
One thing I don’t want to get lost in all the hubbub. Amidst all the many impressive aspects of the work the physicists and machine-builders did to make the LHC happen and achieve this fantastic discovery, I was very struck by how eager people were to give credit to other people. In their main talks, both Fabiola Gianotti and Joe Incandela went out of their way to give credit to the machine builders, the technicians who worked on their experiments, and the thousands of colleagues within each collaboration who contributed to the result. But that eagerness to share credit went well beyond the official announcements — everyone we talked to was quick to point out how far-reaching and international the project really was. The very quintessence of a group effort.
More Physics News
Higgs articles
Higgs 101. This is a few years old, but still good.
Final Word from the Tevatron on the Higgs Hunt
Live-Blogging the Higgs Seminar
The official Press Release: CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson
The Biggest Firework of them all: The Higgs!
New baby boson is born, weighing in at about 126 GeV
Does 5-sigma = discovery? [Yes]. What all those sigmas mean, and the difference between random and systematic error. Also see The Higgs Boson – Certainly, certainly (?) there! (at least, I am pretty certain it is).
There should be a Nobel Prize out of this, but who should get it? This is a non-trivial problem. On the Higgs row and Nobel reform
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 