|
|
|
|
|
|
cultural literacy
|
teaching &
education
|
late April 2014 |
||||||
missed the partial solar eclipse of 4/29/14? (Earth & Sky) pictures here and, anyway, why aren't there eclipses at every new or full moon? (Earth & Sky) short answer: because Earth's orbit around the sun isn't coplanar with Moon's orbit about Earth Landing on Mars in 20 years? NASA unrealism (Washington Post) why not let robots go first? and anyway, There's no escape in space colonies... (Science 2.0) why there's not much practical point in colonizing Mars Clues to the early Martian atmosphere (Astronomy magazine) from Martian meteorites found on Earth evidence for 26 kiloton-plus explosions in Earth's atmosphere caused by asteroids (Earth & Sky) how long will our luck hold? watch (where) the asteroids hit (New Scientist) Vitamin B from meteorites? (Earth&Sky) but it also could have been synthesized chemically on ancient Earth |
stellar evolution in real time? (Sky & Telescope) are we finally seeing the long-predicted, but never observed, 'helium shell flash' at the center of the Sting Ray? the first self-lensing eclipsing binary (Science) white dwarf and G m.s. star produce a light curve with one eclipse and one gravitationally- lensed brightening |
How unusual is our solar system? (Astrobites) not very, at least when it comes to the planets' nearly circular orbits... the more planets a system has, the more circular the orbits Kepler 186f, first "habitable Earth twin" discovered (S F State U) or so it's hyped... it's 10% larger than Earth, it orbits an M star near the outer edge of its habitable zone, so not exactly an 'Earth twin' published article (Science) commentary (Science) makes the point that this system only fulfills 2 conditions, (Earth-sized and in the habitable zone) but not the 3rd (orbits around a sun-like star) Space Oceans and the Search for Life (WBUR OnPoint) 1-hr discussion of Enceladus and the new habitable-zone planet discovery |
How central black holes affect galactic shapes and colors (Astronomy magazine) larger black holes at the center seem to stop star formation 2 supermassive black holes in the same galaxy (Max Planck Institute) the first pair found in a normal galaxy, and smoking-gun evidence for galactic mergers was the BICEP2 result contaminated by a stellar explosion? (New Scientist) it may take results from Planck, later this year, to settle the issue The dark side of inflation (New Scientist) have we seen all there is to see? perhaps inflation hides not only the real Big Bang but any evidence of quantum gravity |
Supersymmetry and the Crisis in Physics (Scientific American May 2014 issue) prove it right in the next year or confront an epochal paradigm shift Is Spacetime like a Liquid? (Earth & Sky) |
quality of life How well-educated is your home county? (Washington Post) this map tells you... Raleigh/Durham is near the top In the long run, wars make us safer and richer (Washington Post) disappointing to know income & inequality High Plains Moochers (Paul Krugman, NYT) the dumbing down of the American right wing... except there isn't much more room at the bottom The Sense of Entitlement of the Rich and Privileged (Washington Post) why can't we say 'stop'? Why only one top banker went to jail in the financial crisis (NY Times Magazine) "mistakes were made" by prosecutors The Pay Gap is because of gender, not jobs (NY Times) Republicans' willful misunderstanding of the numbers A tough few weeks for Obamacare bashers (Politico) Ted Cruz's worst nightmare is coming true Losing the Lead (NY Times) US middle-class no longer the richest in the world voting fraud (and its absence) The Voter-Fraud Myth (New Yorker) the story of the Republican lawyer who stoked fear about impostors at the polls economics and Thomas Piketty Capital Man (Chronicle of Higher Ed) Is Thomas Piketty economics' biggest sensation or its biggest critic? Why we're in a new Gilded Age (Paul Krugman, NP, NY Review of Books) "the incomes of the 1% ... are actually the big story in rising inequality' Inequality is not the problem (NY Review of Books) "the central fact is that the welfare of Americans depends on faster economic growth" The Power of Piketty's Capital (The Nation) "a brilliant book has named the problem of our time" Capital Punishment (Foreign Affairs) "why a global tax on wealth won't end inequality" the future of America? Could America become Mississippi? (Slate) demographics, conservatism, and racial polarization Could America become a banana republic? (Norm Ornstein) science How scientific inquiry works (Dublin Review of Books) a review of "Are we all scientific experts now?" based on a study of gravitational-wave researchers math Math spying : the quandary of working for the spooks (New Scientist) would-be employees must realise that their work is misused to snoop on everyone Game of Primes ends as math gets too hard (New Scientist) not science Chicken Little Science (Tribune Media) the right wing and anti-science What Whole Foods doesn't tell you (Science Based Medicine) Whole Foods homeopathy What's wrong with TED talks (YouTube) the relative worthlessness of TED talks (with an example about astrophysics) Immanuel Velikovsky and the rise of the scientific fringe (The Nation) his works theorized that Venus was a comet expelled by Jupiter, and its close encounter with Earth triggered the plagues of Egypt and the Exodus |
Legacies in college admissions (NY Times) we can give preferences to the 1%, but not to diversity? wow. NC and 'Common Core' NC legislature committee recommends replacing Common Core with state standards (Raleigh N&O) to address "NC's special needs".... as in lower standards? or maybe we just need higher standards for elected office? Common Core in NC: Fact vs. Fiction (Charlotte Observer) - - - - - - - - - - - - - How NOT to determine teacher salaries (LtE: Raleigh N&O) Judge halts NC end-of-tenure law (Raleigh N&O) at least in Guilford and Durham counties; prospects for rest of the state uncertain Why are White House interns still unpaid? (Washington Post) why isn't the President leading by example? Wake County sees 'alarming' increase in mid-year teacher resignations (Raleigh N&O) gee, could it be related to the following: NC legislature to teachers: just kidding about that raise (Raleigh N&O) 'more study needed' NC to teachers: sorry, no pay raise (Raleigh N&O) legislature says NC is too "cash-strapped" (after a 2.4 billion $ pay cut for the well off) to afford a raise |
early April 2014 |
||||||
if you missed the total lunar eclipse of tuesday (4/5/14) morning, some pictures: Earth & Sky Raleigh N&O rewind: watch a replay of the lunar eclipse (all 3 hours!) Is Saturn creating a new moon? (NASA Cassini) evidence for 3.3-billion-year asteroid impact found in Africa (American Geophysics Union) 30-mile-diameter collision with Earth would have created world-wide earthquake & boiled oceans A subsurface water ocean on Enceladus (Cassini) the most promising place to look for life in the solar system? published article and commentary (Science) commentary NY Times Washington Post Aurora alert for April 1 & 2 (Earth & Sky) as a consequence of a coronal mass ejection and X-ray flare on March 29 |
NC State's Steve Reynolds studies supernovae with Nustar (Raleigh N&O) local boy does good Mystery of polluted atmospheres solved? (Astronomy) why do white dwarf atmospheres have excess metals? they ate their planets earlier in their lives |
parallax distances extended by a factor of 10x with 'ingenious new method' (Hubble) Is Segue 1, Milky Way companion, a fossil galaxy? (Scientific American) its virtually-all-H/He composition is telling us something important the 'morning' after (BICEP2) thoughts on inflation: inflation headaches (Science) the simplest inflation models appear to be ruled out Wrinkles and discrepancies (New Scientist) too much of a good thing? death-blow to pre-Big-Bang and ekpyrotic universes (Scientific American) an interview with Gabriele Veneziano multiverse controversy heats up (Scientific American) well, at least the hot air from the pros and cons does multiverse is still 'not even wrong' (Peter Woit) as in neither provable or disprovable doubters' corner: John Horgan, Scientific American Peter Coles, In the Dark ----------------------------------- inflation resources: (in order of increasing complexity) All about cosmic inflation inflation, on the back of an envelope TASI inflation lectures (156 pages, advanced undergrad) ----------------------------------- the case for a multiverse the case against ----------------------------------- A new galactic yardstick (Sky & Telescope) using AGNs as standard candles to measure the Hubble constant? Diane Rehm show tackles gravitational waves & the Big Bang: for an hour @ 11 am, Tuesday April 1 (Diane Rehm show) not an April fool... with Mario Livio and Paul Steinhardt (the show's topic is, curiously, listed as "environmental", not "science") |
Dark Matter annihilating at the Milky Way's core? (Scientific American) A 3rd peta-ev neutrino shows up in IceCube (Scientific American) An unexpected and exotic particle at the LHC (The Conversation) a possible tetraquark: charm, anticharm, down & anti-up (reportedly at 14 sigma) |
climate change IPCC report: governments need to do more to avoid a climate disaster (Washington Post) as usual, the comments after the article say a lot about the country we live in Time for Climate Scientists to Go on Strike (Bill McKibben) Science has worked; Politics has failed... it's time to stop churning out more reports voting (suppression) Rage, and why it's appropriate (NY Times) the Republican campaign to inhibit voting Combating GOP efforts to restrict youth voting (Raleigh N&O) the depths to which Republicans have gone to stop people from voting CIA & 'interrogation' Declassify the report on CIA interrogation and torture (Diane Feinstein & Jay Rockefeller) The correct response to torture is outrage (Washington Post) whether torture works or not is irrelevant... -------------------------- US ranks a sobering 16th in "Social Progress" (NY Times) our military and economic strengths don't translate into social well-being country rankings |
NC Legislators: "We'll work to raise teachers pay" (Raleigh N&O) “How do you justify funding public education by forcing teachers to go on public welfare?” Research shows that serious reading takes a hit from internet use (Washington Post) as if anyone who reached adulthood in the pre-internet era doesn't know this from personal experience Don't help your kids with their homework (Atlantic) and other do's and dont's for parents Why Asian-Americans kids excel.... It's not Tiger Moms (Washington Post) although it might be the choices that the Tiger Moms (and Dads) make |
|
|
||||||
Discovery of most distant dwarf planet hints at inner Oort cloud (NY Times) 250-mi-diameter object is 80 au from sun at nearest (i.e., beyond the Kuiper belt) PLUS indications of larger-than-Earth-sized object farther out? Nature article and commentary commentary from the discoverers (Carnegie) Active volcanoes on Venus? (Sky & Telescope) transient hot spots on the surface add to other circumstantial evidence (e.g., transient atmospheric sulfur dioxide changes) First asteroid discovered with rings (Earth & Sky) only the 5th body in the solar system found with rings (after the 4 giant planets)... Chariklo is the largest of the Centaurs The Incredible Shrinking Mercury (Sky & Telescope) during cooling, Mercury shrank in diameter by 14 km First interactive mosaic of lunar north pole (NASA JPL) |
Supermassive Pop III stars: a new way to die? (Astrobites) stars with an initial mass of a few hundred thousand solar masses (!!) might be the precursors of SMBHs at galactic centers... so far, only computer models, no confirming observations Massive star's companion survives supernova (Astronomy) only the 3rd such survivor known Star factory in the Monkey Head (Hubble) Hubble's 24th anniversary image |
Mystery of planet-forming disk explained (NASA JPL) by magnetic storms |
Primordial gravitational-wave polarization (B mode) detected! first direct evidence for Big Bang inflation... ("the biggest thing since dark energy"... "the greatest discovery of the century"... "Nobel prize discovery") scientific presentation & news conference 10:45 am - 1 pm Monday 3/17 How the biggest scientific discovery of the year was kept a secret (Wired) Interview with Jamie Bock (Caltech) (since I taught him astrophysics first) Neil Turok urges caution (Physics World) "‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’, and they don’t have extraordinary evidence just yet” nontechnical links: NY Times New Scientist Scientific American Scientific American blog Nature interview with John Kovac semi-technical links: (uses physics & math): Nature Nature archive on "Waves from the Big Bang" Sky and Telescope Of Particular Interest Preposterous Universe technical: research paper Primordial Gravity Waves and Cosmology (Science) the best pre-discovery review of polarized gravity waves ---------------------------------- 360° view of the Milky Way unveiled (Spitzer) zoomable mosaic is here constructed from 2 million images |
Just-discovered Einstein manuscript suggests continuous matter creation to explain expanding universe (NPR) but he later caught his sign mistake, and didn't publish |
economics A Nation of Takers? (NY Times) but the evidence is that the 'takers' are rich people, not the poor science Flies that do calculus with their wings (NY Times) well, perhaps not quite 'calculus' new Nate Silver site launches (538) from the guy who predicted every state correctly in the 2012 election... and now also predicting sports, science, & economics... OK, maybe sports craziness Who's more famous than Jesus? (NY Times) Aristotle and Plato, apparently, but not Socrates... (do people at MIT have nothing better to do?) current events Russia or us? Who's the bully? (Washington Post) by an ex-ambassador to the Soviet Union rising adults What the Duke porn-star student says about our culture (Washington Post) spoiler alert: it's not a positive The Overprotected Kid (Atlantic) hey, parents, leave those kids alone spying & lying, continued latest Snowden revelation: NSA records all calls in at least one country, for later playback (Washington Post) country not revealed, bu apparently more countries are on the hit list |
It's time to combat NC education atrocities (Raleigh N&O) two views of Common Core: pro (Huffington Post) con (Diane Ravitch) college admissions April madness: the problem with college admissions (Washington Post) Inside the admissions process at GWU (Washington Post) opposite views on a STEM shortage The myth of the science and engineering shortage (Atlantic) and others say the STEM shortage is real (Science) |
|
||||||
first-ever alien rainbow (New Scientist) seen on Venus, it may provide the clue to the unknown absorber in Venus's atmosphere How NASA is using crowd-sourcing and prizes to protect Earth from asteroids (Guardian) oh, and this is better than systematic searches because? Disintegration of an asteroid (Hubble) cause: sunlight? A common origin for Martian meteorites? (New Scientist) produced when the giant Mojave crater on Mars was formed Is the boom in finding the solar system's dwarf planets finally over? (Scientific American) the last big ones were found in 2007 guide to the 5 visible planets in March (Earth & Sky) Jupiter in the evening; Mars & Saturn in the very late evening or early morning Venus & Mercury before dawn The unexpectedly complex (geologically speaking) asteroid Hektor (Astronomy) the Trojan is the only asteroid with its own moon Watch the close approach of asteroid 2014 DX110 to Earth Wednesday night, 3/5/14 (Universe Today) discovered less than a week ago, it misses Earth by about 27 Earth diameters .... there's still a 1 in 10 million chance for a direct hit in 2046 another NEO, CU13 passes by on Sunday, 3/9/14.... watch it here |
Largest yellow supergiant ever (ESO) larger than Jupiter's orbit, 50% larger than Betelgeuse How to make lanthanides or not (Astrobites) lanthanide-making requires free neutrons for the r process... neutrons made by antineutrino-irradiation in neutron-star mergers? stray asteroid encounters pulsar beacon (Sky & Telescope) Overeating in a stellar- mass black hole? (Sky & Telescope) its kinetic power exceeds the Eddington limit; perhaps black-hole driven winds play a larger role in galactic evolution than assumed? Science magazine abstract link |
Death stars in Orion blast planets in the making (NRAO) Every red dwarf has at least one orbiting planet (Sky & Telescope) |
Rumors of major gravitational-wave discovery (Guardian) a big deal, if true Two roads through the green valley of galaxy colors (Astrobites) late-type galaxies shut off star formation due to running out of gas... early-type, as a result of mergers The fastest-approaching object in the universe (Scientific American) a star cluster flung toward us by M87's SMBH We need philosophers to tackle the big cosmic puzzles (New Scientist) no, that's the last thing we need... how about more data instead? Galaxy ripped apart by its own cluster (Hubble) ram-pressure stripping strikes again Giant black hole spinning at ½ light speed (Scientific American) uhh, what exactly is spinning at ½ c ?? Fingerprinting the circumgalactic medium (Sky & Telescope) nearby dwarf galaxies' composition are strikingly pristine A stellar-mass black hole in M83 ate too much? (Sky & Telescope) |
Evidence that plants get their energy from quantum entanglement? (io9) awesome commentaries on the late February announcements (occasioned by the 2014 UCLA Dark Matter & Dark Energy Symposium) of possible evidence for dark matter (and 3 different types: 35-Gev or 10-Gev WIMPs and a 7-kev sterile neutrino): X-rays from other galaxies could emanate from dark matter (Science) on the sterile neutrino possibility Fresh hint of dark matter in neutrino search (New Scientist) on the sterile neutrino possibility Dark matter developments (Preposterous Universe) on both WIMP and sterile neutrino possibilities Case for dark matter signal strengthens (Quanta) on the WIMP possibility ____________________ the actual papers: Gamma-ray signal from central Milky Way: A compelling case for annihilating dark matter (arXiv) Are x-rays from other galaxies signs of dark matter decay? (Science) 3.5-kev line present in 73 galaxy supercluster spectra due to annihilation of 7-kev sterile neutrinos .... plus independent confirmation by another group who observed the same line in the Perseus cluster and the Andromeda galaxy ____________________ slides from the DMDE Symposium talks: slides from the sterile neutrino DMDE symposium talk slides from the Milky Way γ-ray emission DMDE symposium talk ____________________ the big questions: why aren't these showing up at the LHC or in direct detection experiments? ____________________ Did dark matter kill the dinosaurs? (Nature) sun's passage through dark-matter disk responsible for mass extinctions? Broaden the search for dark matter (Nature) searches need to be broader: heavier particles, SUSY particles, axions, time- dependent effects |
science 8 things we don't know about the universe (Scientific American) why is it's there, dark matter & energy, the quantum world, human biology, etc. A new physics theory of life (Quanta) or at least its origin and evolution... it's thermodynamics 'LASERs to beam our minds into space soon' (Wired) please let it be after I'm dead ___________ the new 'Cosmos' Comos starts Sunday 3/9/14 on Fox & NatGeo channels Neil deGrasse Tyson and the reboot of the Cosmos series (NY Times) Cosmos: a fond return to the vastness of space (Washington Post) Why Carl Sagan is truly irreplacable (Smithsonian) 4 things Tyson gets 'wrong' in just the first hour ignore the bizarre 5th ... but, what's worse, it was boring ___________ When trilobites ruled the world (NY Times) Take a breath and thank a sponge (NY Times) for the rise of atmospheric oxygen math Using math to tell if your relationship will last (Salon) L = 8 + .5Y – .2P + .9Hm + .3Mf + J – .3G – .5(Sm – Sf)2 + I + 1.5C of course. 'The experience of mathematical beauty and its neural correlates' (Frontiers in Neuroscience) or, Equations are Art inside a Mathematician's Brain Progress in solving the Navier-Stokes equations? (Quanta) one of the 7 greatest unsolved modern math problems not math? Voynich mystery manuscript gets an alphabet (New Scientist) whether the manuscript is a long-lost language or gibberish is still being debated Why scholars can't resist the Voynich Manuscript (Boston Globe) rising adults Inside the Millenial Mind (Raleigh N&O) the selfie generation Silicon Valley's youth problem (NY Times) and the developing cultural divide in America The Dark Power of Fraternities (The Atlantic) how much more rape and paralytic injury can we afford? Want to fix fraternities? Ban booze (Washington Post) duh... ΦΔΘ has already done it current events There is no meritocracy. The power of othe 1% (Salon) and how Obama walked away from the problem he promised to fix North Carolina's toxic future (Bloomberg) both literally and figuratively: what the Republican immoral majority has wrought DENR regulator cuts jarring in wake of Dan River spill (Raleigh N&O) environmental job cuts, weakened regulations, unspent money since Republicans gained power Why Putin doesn't respect us (NY Times) and what we can do about it: raise gas taxes The Last Days of Blackbeard (Smithsonian) |
Letter grades deserve an "F" (Atlantic) as if you will ever get everyone to agree on the meaning and purpose of grades NC teacher salaries remain 46th in nation (Raleigh N&O) $10,500 below average & $30,000 less than NY... and it's interesting that NC is 46th in % of teachers that are male (20%)... (and why is it that the bottom 10 states -- in terms of % of teachers that are male -- are all in the South? salary info on page 19 of the NEA report To keep teenagers alert, schools (should) start later (NY Times) moving the start of school to 9 am The Story Behind the SAT Overhaul (NY Times) losing students to the ACT, catering to the rich, and increasingly deemed irrelevant how the SAT favors the rich and well-educated (Washington Post) 4 graphs SAT sarcasm light SAT sarcasm heavier Wake County opposes elimination of teacher tenure (Raleigh N&O) Durham County expected to follow suit College Crisis: the great unleveler (Raleigh N&O)) higher education is reinforcing, not reducing, inequality An Era of Neglect: How Higher Education got to a Tipping Point (Chronicle of Higher Education) how public colleges were crowded out, beaten up, and failed to fight back |