Category Archives: science

Down The Line on Strings

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The (spoof) phone-in “Down The Line” on Radio 4 last week was brilliant! It featured a guest talking about science, with a particular focus on his dislike of string theory, and with the callers (the usual brilliant cross section of UK phone-in archetypes) taking the discussion all over the place: Doctor Who, soccer, “female scientists”, gay daleks, and so on and so forth.

My favourite question: “Why do they have to keep mucking about with the […] Click to continue reading this post →

The Right Tools for the Job

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pistol_grip_shuttle_toolThe space shuttle mission launching today (around 2:00pm ET) has a very special task. It is going to take some astronauts up to do some crucial repairs (see story here) on the Hubble Space Telescope. It is the last such mission (Hubble will be retired into the Pacific eventually) and has been long awaited. Please keep your fingers crossed for a successful mission to keep such an important scientific instrument working for another five (or so) years to teach us more about the universe. (Go to the Hubble site here.)

NPR had a rather good piece about the special tools that were designed to allow these repairs to be carried out. The point is that the astronauts are not just swapping out parts or modules that were designed to be swapped out (like you do a light bulb, a shower head, or a shaving foil), but they have to go in and take out things deeper […] Click to continue reading this post →

Tales From The Industry XXVIII – Angels, Demons, and Antimatter

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So, apparently there is physics in the upcoming huge film Angels and Demons (and presumably the book). Lots of it. I did not know that until recently. So imagine my surprise a few months ago when I got a message from a producer (Natalie Artin of Prometheus Pictures) of a documentary about it, asking if I’d like to contribute, talking about aspects of the physics.

They wanted me to talk about anti-matter. This is as a result of finding a blog post of mine over on Correlations, entitled “Not Science Fiction”, which starts:

Anti-matter. Seeing the previous word, you immediately glance back at the title, right? Strangely, it has been 80 years since the discovery of anti-matter, and we use it routinely in our technology. Nevertheless, anti-matter is still thought of as something from science fiction (and mostly bad science fiction at that).

dirac_equation It all goes back to one of my favourite theoretical physicists, Paul Dirac, and you might like how he found it (roughly). He essentially did it by […]

I agreed to talk, if I could focus on one of the main issues of my post: That anti-matter is not weird stuff of science fiction, but actual routine science…. so routine that it is used commonly in medical diagnosis, for example. The “P” in PET scans stands for “positron”. The positron is the anti-electron. (The “E” does not […] Click to continue reading this post →

Professors Do It Too

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Remember a couple of weeks ago I was mentioning an outbreak of schoolboy(-like) giggles from my physics 408b class due (it turns out, if you did the homework on the equation) to some audience-perceived off-colour hidden joke in some of the material I was presenting? (I’m still a bit embarrassed since I had no intention of making the joke they saw.) Well, just a couple of days later, I was witness to it again, but this time it was in a lecture by someone else, and the audience was mostly professors, and it was one of my esteemed colleagues who couldn’t help himself and broke out giggling. Well, actually, there was a short loud guffaw which burst out. So you see, even the fine upstanding citizens can submit to juvenile giggles.

Let me tell the story. We had the eminent evolutionary biologist Patricia Gowaty (UCLA) give an excellent talk entitled “Darwin and Gender”, as part of the College […] Click to continue reading this post →

Yesterday at JPL

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jpl_open_house_2009_1I had a lot of fun at this year’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) open house. I’m happy to report that there were, once again, lots of people wandering around looking at the displays and demonstrations, asking questions, hanging out, and so forth, and an impressive turnout of JPL staff answering questions and being very enthusiastic about the science (something which is easy to do because it’s such an excellent topic!). I’ve made a video for you that is coming up at the end of this post. (Click on stills for larger views.)

jpl_open_house_2009_5 jpl_open_house_2009_6

There was the usual huge emphasis on planetary exploration with rovers and robots and so forth – this seems to capture the imagination of everyone, so why not? – but I was more than a little surprised to find virtually no showing for the Planck mission. There was one poster somewhere, but no booth, no model, no description of the truly amazing science that it will do in unlocking more about the origins of the entire […] Click to continue reading this post →

Fun at the Museum Tonight!

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dj_natural_history
Last month’s First Friday was just great! I think I finally understand where LA goes on a Friday night. The Natural History Museum was full of people wandering around looking at the exhibits, going on the tours and listening to the talks (all were at capacity!) and just hanging out listening to the musicians or the DJs. Reminds me a lot of that Josh Ritter event I went to a while back, but so much more extensive, since […] Click to continue reading this post →

Products of Culture

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Well, on day ten (see the earlier post, and also this one) I had no choice: I had to find the time to make some bread soon. I decided to try the default recipe, even though it was not much like the bread I make. One should try new things. The good news was that it is quick and easy to do, and so I did not need to set aside a huge amount of time. So after a bit of prepping:

amish_friendship_bread_1

…it was popped into the oven. Recipe (“remaining batter” is about 1.5 cups of the yeast starter left over from the doings on day ten… see earlier post) for this “Amish Friendship Bread”:
[…] Click to continue reading this post →

See Oh Two

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Remember the Culture? Not the Iain M. Banks civilization, interesting as that is. I mean the yeast from last week’s post Culture is Science.

You’ll recall I mentioned that its primary role in the whole baking business is the production of carbon dioxide. Well, you only see that indirectly via the results of the baking, of course, but while it was going through the ten day growth phase, I got the chance (after feeding it on day 5) to get some nice pictures of the swollen bag that results from its generation of the gas after its munching down on flour and sugar: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Literary Festivities

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ice sculpture with typewritersDon’t forget this weekend’s LA Times Festival of Books! It is always a pleasure to wander the huge festival and see what’s on offer, and simply be part of an enormous gathering of people in LA on the usually lovely weekend days. – Gathering in the name of books! How excellent that is!

Some bad news this year. You’ll recall that I’ve reported (here and here) on the Oscar-like awards ceremony for the book prizes, complete with fancy after-party. (With chocolate fountains, and ice sculptures with embedded typewriters, no less!) Well, they’re not doing it this year. I imagine its the hard financial times. You see… now it’s hitting home to me that there’s a crisis out there – no awards gala, and no chocolate fountains. However will I survive?

Well, the good news is that the awards continue (actually there is a private ceremony at the LA Times building… yes, for all I know if it is the usual affair, and perhaps they just don’t want the riff-raff any more) and the short lists are interesting once again. You can […] Click to continue reading this post →

Killing the Earth

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el_mirage_shootIronically, the day after earth day, a TV program (part of the Naked Science series) entitled ‘How to Kill a Planet’ will air tonight (Thursday 23rd April) at 10pm on National Geographic Channel. It explores various scenarios for how the entire planet could be destroyed. Sensational, yes, but maybe an interesting way of exploring some interesting physics topics in an unusual way, assuming they don’t scare people unduly. I appear in it somewhere, I’m told. I’ll be talking about black holes, and may in fact be shown being swallowed by one, if I recall correctly what was planned. Some may rather enjoy that aspect! [Update: Phil’s on it too!]

You may recall me mentioning a shoot I did up near a dry lake (El Mirage) in the […] Click to continue reading this post →