Let’s see what the peer review process does to this claim. In what he calls “a very simple process,” Dr. Hoover fractured the meteorite stones under a sterile environment before examining the freshly broken surface with the standard tools of the scientist: a scanning-electron microscope and a field emission electron-scanning microscope, which allowed him to…
I just subscribed to this guy’s YouTube channel. Similar:TSA Agent ConfessionIt was May 2007. I was living with a boh…CultureWhat It Was Like to Watch the Beatles Become the BeatlesBeyond their music itself, their greates…CultureDon't Be a Sucker (antifascist film from 1945)https://youtu.be/CXm3WxU–fM?si=E1BHac8J…CultureHistorians Admit To Inventing Ancient GreeksI knew it! Busted!! “One night someone …AcademiaTrump Briefly…
Some years ago I picked up a nonfiction book that I think begins with the creation of four atoms in a supernova, and follows the path of these atoms as one becomes part of a new star, one becomes part of a life form, one falls into a black hole, etc. For some reason my…
In this photo from the front page of today’s Latrobe Bulletin, my daughter explains her “Endangered Art” science project for the judges. She created numerous identical paintings, kept a control in a safe place, and exposed the others to various threats (sunlight, temperature change, the grubby fingers of children). Similar:Nerd-buddies”He likes Lord of the Rings,…
This is my “Super Earth,” about 2.75 times the volume of our planet, orbiting very close to a wimpy Class M star. (Thanks for the link, Jefe.) Similar:Cinderella Deadlines: Reconsidering Timelines for Student WorkI have been experimenting with midnight …AcademiaAnother section of a #steampunk control panel for a texture atlas. #blender3d #blender3dar…AestheticsAnother random background control…
Yesterday, my eight-year-old said, “I don’t like math, but I’m good at it.” This is a huge improvement from the math-related tug-of-wars we’ve encountered almost daily for the past year and a half. Yesterday, she also finished a “Star Wars Math” game, where the idea is to play a Trivial Pursuits style game, spaced-out versions…
As my 12-year-old son gets ready to surpass my six-foot height any day (his lip needs a third shave, but he’s apparently in no rush to graduate away from calling me “Daddy”) and as my 8-year-old navigates a peer community that includes mean girls and true friends, gallant young gentlemen (thank you, little boy who…
A bacterium discovered in a Californian lake appears to be able to use arsenic in its molecular make-up instead of phosphorus – even incorporating the toxic chemical into its DNA. That’s significant because it goes against the general rule that all terrestrial life depends on six elements: oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, sulphur and phosphorus. These…
As a rule, I’m suspicious of any news article that has the world “could” in the headline, but this is certainly interesting stuff. Our existence could be coded in a finite bandwidth, like a live ultra-high-definition 3-D video. And the third dimension we know and love could be no more than a holographic projection of…
Dr. Mary Crone Odekon In today’s Academic Minute, Dr. Mary Crone Odekon of Skidmore College’s physics department discusses how studying fractals can help our understanding of structures in space. WAMC Similar:As Twinkle Twinkle is to Suzuki musicians, so is a wooden shipping crate to CGI modelers. …https://youtu.be/diQF9buONqY I ha…Aesthetics"seriously, the guy has a point" –…
The mind boggles… Lou Gehrig might not have had Lou Gehrig’s disease. —NY Times Similar:Why the trial by ordeal was actually an effective test of guiltHow could an ordeal-administering priest…CultureAbout 30 years after I first saw John Speed’s 1676 map of York, today I was working on a r…About 30 years after I first saw…
“I think he thinks you’re drowning,” the husband said to his wife. They had been splashing each other and she had screamed but now they were just standing, neck-deep on the sand bar. “We’re fine, what is he doing?” she asked, a little annoyed. “We’re fine!” the husband yelled, waving him off, but his captain…
Similar:No, the Fed Did Not Just Give Stock Traders $1.5 TrillionI don’t know that much about the world o…BusinessWhat’s an environmental issue? — Gus SpethI don’t know the provenance of this quot…CultureThis Woman Inspired One of the First Hit Video Games by Mapping the World’s Longest CaveThe Medium headline calls Colossal Cave …AcademiaJoyful white…
I’ve been blogging about the climate change issue for some time now. Here’s the latest, which responds to the exposure of private e-mails in which a climatologist is accused of acknowledging deliberately tweaking the data in order to make a stronger environmental case. [N]ot only did British investigators clear the East Anglia scientist at the center…
Very cool little story that also involves a Frederic Church painting and newspaper archives. Following a trail that began with a 19th century painting and led to hundreds of newspaper reports, the researchers discovered that the “strange huge meteor-procession” mentioned in Whitman’s noted collection “Leaves of Grass” indeed refers to a rare procession of earth-grazing…
One of my students, who is double-majoring in new media journalism and creative writing, is spending a few weeks on a dinosaur dig in Wyoming. She’s turned her academic blog into a travel journal. So far she has written: Thermopolis in Black and White What’s in my Dino Pack? dinoTravel Time dinoTaxi-ing dinoTravel I like…
After hearing that the 16th-century astronomer Copernicus was to be reburied with honors in a Polish ceremony, I checked the Wikipedia entry. Woah! Among the great polymaths of the Renaissance, Copernicus was a mathematician, astronomer, physician, quadrilingual polyglot, classical scholar, translator, artist,[3] Catholic cleric, jurist, governor, military leader, diplomat and economist. Among his many responsibilities,…
I suppose that my face-blindness has made me the person I am. I don’t much like movies or People magazine, not because I’m above caring about movie stars, but because I don’t recognize most of them. I became an addictive reader, an author and an English professor because, in the world of words on paper,…
“Oh yeah! Scientists I’ve talked to say you cannot overestimate how important HeLa cells have been.” Yet no one in the Lacks family had been informed by Johns Hopkins of the existence of their mother’s cells, until a researcher called in the early 1970s wanting to test the family. “Henrietta’s husband basically got a phone…
Christian-based materials dominate a growing home-school education market that encompasses more than 1.5 million students in the U.S. And for most home-school parents, a Bible-based version of the Earth’s creation is exactly what they want. Federal statistics from 2007 show 83 percent of home-schooling parents want to give their children “religious or moral instruction.” Hold…