6000 years of Republican debates. Is there anybody around who can channel H.L. Mencken???
Politicians and Science
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Tag Archives: astronomy
An Earthlike Planet in another Solar System?
“…black holes aren’t too hard to find. They’re bright.”
See 1300 black holes
Blast from the Past
Blast of Giant Atom Created Our Universe, from the December, 1932 issue of Popular Science. From the (2007) introduction:
This is a pretty amazing article. It’s a concise summary of the big bang theory published only 3 years after Edwin Hubble made his famous observations about the redshifts of distant galaxies. Yet it’s pretty much identical to one you’d see today. Only a few details like the size of the initial “atom” and the age of the universe seem off. Keep in mind it took another 35 years or so before the scientific community came to accept that the big bang really happened.
Found via a post at Cosmic Variance, which emphasizes the work of Father Georges-Henri Lemaître, and concludes
Lemaître passed away in 1966, a year after Penzias and Wilson detected the microwave radiation leftover from the Primeval Atom.
I.e, Lemaître lived long enough to see his work confirmed by observation.
Politicians and Astronomy
More on geocentrism linked to a note at Talking Points Memo. There Joshua Micah Marshall laments that Molly Ivins is no longer around to write about the story. Personally, I would like to see H.L. Mencken’s comments.
The Dangers of Scientific Terminology
From Cosmic Variance
The spheroidal distribution of stars in the centers of rotating disk galaxies is called the “bulge”. Now, introduce a bunch of bored and horny 19 year olds into the mix, and you have a dangerous cocktail. One of my colleagues lost complete control of a 250 person lecture class when she had two male students hold up pictures of different galaxies, while she expounded on how “This guy over here has a small bulge, but the bulge of this guy is quite prominent.” The titters started as she forged ahead unknowing, until the entire class collapsed in hysterics. At that point, you just have to put down your laser pointer, send the class home, and head for the bar. Learning is over.
This reminded me of how my classes in quantum mechanics taught me about the mathematics of bras.
Happy Perihelion!
See Approaching the Sun.
Protected: If we privatize NASA….
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From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 