|
|
|
|
|
cultural literacy
|
|
|||||
rare hybrid solar eclipse on Sunday, November 3 (Earth & Sky) in US, only east-coast viewers get a glimpse, at sunrise & just after in Durham, sunrise is 6:43 am; partial eclipse ends at 7:08 am; (remember this is the 1st day of non-daylight-savings-time) 28% of the sun's diameter will be covered at sunrise similar eclipse timings/predictions for other US cities how to find comet ISON: (it still requires a telescope; on 10/31/13 it was m = 8.5, about as bright as Neptune... and brightening by about 0.1 magnitude per day.... binoculars in a dark sky should work by the 2nd week of November?) live finding chart & magnitude finding chart for late October finding chart for all of 2013 TV135, one of those asteroids with a 1-in-10,000 chance of hitting Earth (Sky & Telescope) in 2032 Friday's (Oct. 18) penumbral eclipse of the moon (Scientific American) and why you'll not notice it Where did the Moon come from? (Science) Impact theory gets whacked How we figured out the solar system (Scientific American) a special rehash Huge meteorite pulled from Russian lake (Sky and Telescope) from last February's Chelyabinsk encounter |
Cosmos seeded with heavy elements during its first 4 billion years Nature Symmetry commentary uniform distribution of metals across cluster of galaxies implies early fusion free downloadable e-book on black holes (Sky and Telescope) |
Kepler 78b, an Earth-like planet, but infernally hot Sky and Telescope link NY Times link Nature link Earth-like density implies a composition of iron and rock 15% of sun-like stars have Earth-like (size,mass) planets (Astrophysical Journal) Kepler satellite finds solar system in which planetary orbits are tilted 45 degrees to star's equator (Nature) first system discovered with significant tilt |
Most distant confirmed galaxy (with an unexpectedly high star-formation rate) (Astrobites) z = 7.51, born 700 MY after the Bang.... are we finally seeing into the past, before the universe's reionization? Nature article Milky Way's supermassive black hole has acted up twice in last few centuries (Chandra) x-ray light echoes off molecular clouds allow visions of the recent past Most distant gravitational lens presents early universe mystery (Hubble) why are there so many small galaxies? The Formation History of Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxies (arXiv) including 12 recently-discovered companions of the Milky Way Scientific American commentary Local Group is now up to 65+ members |
Black holes shrink but endure? (Nature) paper claims that black holes do NOT evaporate... contradicting 40-year-old predictions of Stephen Hawking first results of LUX announced LUX has detected NO dark matter (NY Times) listen to live seminar from South Dakota (10 am, 10/30) results in print (LUX) contradict results of other recent experiments how LUX works Scientific American commentary update on the black hole firewall paradox (Scientific American) new Phys Rev Letters article strengthens argument that physics breaks down at the event horizon (as opposed to the long-thought singularity) LUX (xenon detector searching for dark matter) to release latest results at end of October (Nature) null result in latest neutrino-less (double) beta decay results (Quanta) still no evidence that neutrinos are their own antiparticles The Supercollider that never was (Scientific American) $2.4 billion spent, tunnels drilled, physics careers lost.... and an inkling to come of the US's diminishing leadership in science? |
history sober reflections on the JFK assassination 50 years ago (New Yorker) technology latest Snowden leak on Project MUSCULAR: NSA has secretly infiltrated Google, Yahoo data centers (Washington Post) Google, Yahoo furious (Guardian) NSA retracts its initial denial; GCHQ has no comment Google joins ALEC from "don't do evil" to "let's do evil"? (in case you've forgotten, ALEC wants tax repeal for the wealthy, an end to renewable energy sources, voter ID laws, etc) A primer on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ArsTechnica) economics/politics Why the 1% should pay an 80% tax rate (Guardian) an NC Republican chairman on The Daily Show this week: NC Voter ID law was intended to "kick Democrats in the butt", to go after college students and "lazy blacks who want the government to give them everything." (Raleigh N&O) as if we didn't already know? post-shutdown thoughts from abroad the US government shutdown: a view from abroad (Guardian) "The rottenness of modern Washington makes outsiders gasp." post-shutdown, Republicans need to read 2012 or Never again (and again, and again) (NY Magazine) an accurate prediction of their present predicament, from 1.5 years ago from the conservatives: Against Despair (National Review) from the liberals" Make' Em Pay (NY Times) education 'Selective' colleges failing to attract talented poor students (NY Times) The key to school success: relentless focus, constant teacher development (NY Times, Raleigh N&O) US adults fare poorly in math, technology, and literacy (NY Times) why is this a surprise, since our pre-college students fare just as poorly?? Poor children are now the majority in US public schools in the South & West (Washington Post) NC included Inequality
Is a Choice
|
|
|||||
guide to the visible planets for October (Earth & Sky) a nice time see Uranus finding chart for Uranus & Neptune (Sky and Telescope) Neptune's tiny moon Naiad makes its first appearance in 15 years (New Scientist) too small and too close to Neptune, except for Hubble Pluto's Eternal Atmosphere (Scientific American) it never freezes out and it's now thicker than ever before (well, at least since it was discovered) rise of Life on Earth becomes more puzzling.... the faint young sun paradox can't be solved by an excessive greenhouse effect in the past Hitting paydirt on Mars (NY Times) unexpected rocks, unexpected water, & a disappointing lack of methane Supervolcanoes hiding in plain sight on Mars? (Sky & Telescope, Nature) they could explain the equatorial dust deposits on the Martian surface Cassini discover polypropylene on Titan (NASA) so there are grocery stores on Titan? |
water-rich planetary building blocks found around a white dwarf (Hubble) similar story (Scientific American) |
telescope tandem finds first evidence for B-mode polarization in CMB (ESA) but does it tell us about inflation or gravitational lensing? animation of Earth's night sky as Milky Way and Andromeda merge (Hubble) since you won't be around to see it in several billion years |
download the 25th anniversary issue of Physics World and find out
is the Higgs the generator of dark matter? (Nature) the result of an asymmetry between the Higgs and its antiparticle? Higgs breaks silence and actually answers questions (New Scientist) Physics Nobel to Higgs & Englert physics Nobel prize Press release Popular information Advanced information What is the Higgs? (NY Times) an explanation in 52 cartoon-slides The twists and turns of Hi(gg)story (Matt Strassler) why the Higgs matters, higgs field vs higgs particles, and a whole lot more The Multiverse is not a paradigm and it's not shifting anything rational observations on multiverse silliness Hairy Black Hole could show gaps in General Relativity (New Scientist) gravitational-wave imprint might give a clue as to what's inside the Amplituhedron curiosity: A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics (Quanta) The Amplituhedron and other excellently silly words crazy stuff? Want to see evidence of other universes? (Nautil.us) just look up not only the multiverse, but entangled multiverses |
the education wars My wife, the (former) overburdened teacher (Raleigh N&O) a 106-question standardized test for 11-year-olds (Washington Post) Spying on Moral Monday Protesters? (Raleigh N&O) who ordered it? what info was collected? is it still going on? Noble Prizes awarded this week miscellaneous physics Feynman Lectures, Volume I (html version) free and on-line (Caltech) Volume II and III in preparation Why are there still so few women in science? (NY Times magazine) a longish article by a woman who chose not to pursue grad study in physics and a commentary by a woman who did politics/economics 10 sleazy things Congress members did during the shutdown (Huffington Post) berating park rangers; keeping the congressional gym open as an essential service; etc. where the GOP 'suicide caucus' lives (The New Yorker) southern & mid-west, less diverse, less educated.... they live in a different world Rich People Just Care Less (NY Times) as if we didn't know Raleigh police secretly inflitrated 'Moral Monday' planning meetings (WRAL) they were 'keeping an eye out for anarchists' useless trivia 100 things you don't need to do before you die (Guardian) reading fiction makes you a nicer person (New Scientist) but pulp fiction doesnt count |
|
|
|||||
heads up! Earth to leave habitable zone (Nature) in 1.75 billion years Curiosity comes up empty in search for life of Mars (NY Times) no evidence for methane extreme silliness: Harvest moon rises this week (mid-september) How to see it (Scientific American) ?? how could you miss it ?? it's s full moon !! |
Pulsar on the Fence (Chandra) it switches from radio to x-ray pulses... is it a missing link? KAVLI conference on black holes (with video/audio) what's inside a black hole? falling into a naked singularity coldest brown dwarfs blur line between stars and planets |
Sara Seager, exoplanet hunter, one of 24 MacArthur 2013 grant winners download her free 48-page ebook on "The Search for Habitable Planets" |
Hubble/Chandra find densest galaxy in nearby universe 10,000 stars crammed within a few light years universe may be slightly curved and not flat (Nature) evidence is thin, but consistent with latest Planck results why the Milky Way's black hole erupted 2 Myr ago how the Coma cluster of galaxies got so huge (Chandra) x-ray emitting gas evidence of recent mergers and acquisitions new 3-D map of Milky Way's bulge (Sky & Telescope) 5-year dark-energy survey begins and, of course, a blog to accompany it why disk galaxies all look alike the original clumps gravitationally scatter stars into smooth circular orbits Gravity-wave detectors get ready to probe the Big Bang (preview of October issue of Scientific American) did a hyper-blackhole spawn the universe? (Nature) the Big Bang was just a mirage? |
first experimental measurement of the proton's weak charge how to see quantum gravity in the Big Bang polarization (Nature) |
education When every child is a winner, we all lose (News & Observer) Veritasium does science explanation videos better than anyone else the 'how special relativity makes magnets work' is particularly impressive' Showdown over science in Texas (Slate) Creationists try to remove evolution from Texas classrooms (why) I quit Teach for America (The Atlantic) hype vs. reality.... Why the 'S' in Stem is overrated (The Atlantic) "Do we really need more science grads?" My daughter's homework is killing me (The Atlantic) are teachers really giving too much homework? geology/geography what the continents looked like millions of years ago new IPCC report ties climate skeptics in knots (Guardian) guns US gun use out of control... (Guardian) should the world intervene? how history might have been different the day a US B-52 dropped a hydrogen bomb on Goldsboro, North Carolina (Guardian) it didn't detonate because of a single bad fuse... and just one of "at least 700 'significant' US accidents ... involving 1,250 nuclear weapons ... between 1950 and 1968 alone.". document finally unclassified: "It would have been bad news ..." spying/lying, continued latest Snowden leak: NSA collecting social network data for Americans (NY TImes) Seymour Hersh (he's still alive?) on "the pathetic American media" (Guardian) |
|
|||||
A Far-Flung Possibility for the Origin of Life (NY Times) we're all martians now? What our telescopes couldn't see (NY Times) the socio-intellectual perils of being an astronomer Voyager I leaves the solar system (NASA) it's now official Quebec crater evidence for Earth-cooling asteroid impact 13,000 years ago? (Nature) extraterrestrial Trojan found leading Uranus around the sun (Astronomy) best chance to see Venus in the daytime: Sunday September 8: here's how does Earth have a second moon? uhhh....sometimes solar satellite untangles sun's interior motions (NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory) a double layer of convection cells lies just below the surface September guide to the visible planets 2 in the pre-dawn; 2 in the post-sunset new Moon mission raises questions about future (New York Times) |
is 3C58 the remnant of the 1181 A.D. supernova? Einstein@Home discovers 24 new pulsars... and it now works on Android phones planetary nebula mystery: why are their axes aligned perpendicular to the galactic plane? (Hubble) Hubble and the Cosmic Caterpillar how the sun lost its lithium |
super-earth Gleise 1214b likely has water-rich atmosphere |
Google video hangout on Supermassive Black Holes (Kavli Foundation, 9/12/13) largest concentration of globular clusters discovered (Hubble) 160,000 in Abell 1689 compared to a puny 150 in the Milky Way Parallel Worlds (Aeon) if a multiverse exists, who gets credit for achievement, progress, & morality? supermassive black hole at center of our galaxy is presently rejecting 99% of its food |
The 20 big unsolved questions in science (Guardian) are massive gravitons the key to understanding dark energy? (Nature) The Origins of Space and Time (Nature) LHC celebrates 5 years of not blowing up the world (Scientific American) gravitaional constant G has changed? (New Scientist) " ... and this time, it's serious ..." time crystals & perpetual motion machines? (Nature) idea by a Physics Nobel Prize Winner (for discovery of quarks) is challenged, but he has a comeback 4 reasons Physics says that you shouldn't exist (Slate) |
education No child left untableted (NY TImes) NC's Guilford County experiment with a tablet-for-every-student.... and what the money should have been spent on The STEM crisis is a myth (IEEE) instead of creating more STEM careerists, we should concentrate on making everyone literate in STEM Return of the Texas Creationists (NY Times) yes, it's a horror movie Admitting the master's pay mistake in NC (Greensboro News & Record) what? NC Republicans (OK, 2) admit they made a mistake? The Great Stagnation of American Education (New York Times) consequences & possible solutions Wrongly narrowing education's purpose (Raleigh N&O, 9/2/13) "To grind down teacher pay and expenditures per child so that they match a handful of states at the bottom of the nation reflects thoughtless leadership..." E-rate funding needs money for keeping internet useful to schools (Raleigh N&O) or, one more reason our schools keep keep lagging the best in the world Tuition is too damn high (Washington Post) part VIII: Are rich kids ruining college for those less well off? apparently... part IX: Will MOOC's save us? potential is there, but the evidence is slim American Schools are Failing Non-conformist Kids (New Republic) a defense of the wild child Is technology scrambling my baby's brain? (the verge) and making her/him antisocial as well? spying/lying, continued NSA's next target: university professors? (The Guardian) Johns Hopkins professor asked to remove NSA-critical blog from his web site update: JHU dean apologizes, reverses decision US spied on Brazilian oil giant and Chinese techology builder Huawei another Snowden leak contradicts NSA claims that "we don't do economic espionage" What's really frightening about what the NSA did (Los Angeles Times) Dear stupid NSA (Bloomberg BusinessWeek) thanks for making us all insecure biggest Snowden leak so far?: (PBS story: cracking the last bastion of privacy "this one is huge") (9/5/13) co-reported by NY Times, London Guardian, & Pro Publica: NSA is able to foil nearly all Internet encryption (New York Times) (including online banking, shopping, voting ...., credit card info, medical records, etc.) How US/UK spy agencies defeat internet privacy/security (The Guardian) The NSA's secret campaign to undermine internet security (ProPublica) the Obama administration asked that this story not be published and claims that this "provides a roadmap to our adversaries" conveniently ignoring two facts: 1) this is what we accuse China of doing 2) the US government publicly agreed never to do this in the 1990s during the 'clipper chip' battle; instead it lied & set out to do this very thing by stealth NYT decision to publish ProPublica decision to publish Google races to encrypt everything amid NSA backlash (Washington Post) A guide to staying secure (The Guardian) how you can keep (some) privacy (Washington Post) science some insects have gears (Washington Post) which evolved by natural selection Earth's largest volcano discovered (Nature) uhhh...what took so long? just in: Cow tipping is, well, bullcrap (Modern Farmer) it violates fundamental physics A Dark Future for Science (New York Times) don't forget to send a 'thank you' note to the Republicans Syria A war even the Pentagon doesn't want the White House's Syria Secrets (Washington Post) and why its secrecy makes the best case for the US staying out of Syria 9 Questions about Syria you were afraid to ask (Washington Post) the why-Syria-is-complicated map (Washington Post) cheat-sheet on Syria (PBS NewsHour) economics Rich man's recovery (Paul Krugman, NP 2002) Income inequality worst in 100 years... what to do about it? (NY Times) with a remarkable graph showing a strong correlation between income inequality and political polarization How Wal-mart keeps wages low (Washington Post) Years of Tragic Waste (Paul Krugman, NP, Economics) what if we had actually listened to rational economic theory? |