Category Archives: science

Warped Ambitions?

By | | , ,
4 Comments

Just spotted this in the Guardian:

starship enterprizeNext Thursday, the British Interplanetary Society is bringing together physicists for a conference entitled Faster than Light: Breaking the Interstellar Distance Barrier. “The main purpose is to raise awareness of this obscure field of research within general relativity and quantum field theory and attract new and particularly young researchers to work on the technical problems,” said organiser Kelvin Long.

Wow! I had no idea there was such a meeting. Did anyone reading go?! What is the British Interplanetary Society? From their site I found this quote: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Fourth IPCC Report

By | | , , , , , ,
Comments Off on Fourth IPCC Report

Don’t forget to look at the latest IPCC report released today! Full details including helpful digests and summaries can be found here.

News reports and discussions can be found all over the place.

News reports and discussions can be found all over the place. (Update: there’s an NPR report, with audio, here.) A report on the BBC by Richard Black begins:
[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Climate Matters

By | | , , ,
1 Comment

There’s been some really excellent material over on Correlations. I recommend having a look. Among that, there’s been some very interesting posts about climate. The most urgent one is by Sheril, in which she reminds us about the behemoth, Cyclone Sidr, which is bearing down on Bangladesh right now, with potential human cost well beyond that of Katrina. One to watch.

The other posts I wanted to point to is the growing series of posts by Michael about climate science. People largely think of climate science in terms of the global warming arguments, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Michael’s trying to build an […] Click to continue reading this post →

Tales From The Industry XIV – MANswers

By | | , , , , , ,
18 Comments

Ok, ok. Since more than a few people have spotted it, I think it is best to (as they used to say in Hill Street Blues back in the 90s) “get out in front of this thing”.

You’ll recall (see list of related posts) many of the good things that I’ve talked about concerning the work various program makers are doing for the History Channel’s The Universe, and KCET is doing for PBS’ WIRED Science, Discovery’s Science Channel, and other science shows I’ve mentioned (and there are more I’ve not yet mentioned). I’ve shared with you some details about some of my own small role in some of these sorts of things so that you can see some of how these programmes come to be, including various shoots I’ve mentioned here and there, various behind-the-scenes activities, and my optimism about what seems to be a general renewed interest by program makers on various channels in making more and better science programs, working more closely with scientists in the process.

From all this you’ll be of the expectation that within a year or two, my dream that everybody on the street will be chatting about science topics/culture just as often as any other topic in our culture might be realized. Well, of course, that’s a bit hasty. The vast majority of stuff out there is just as it always was, and some efforts go rather wrong. Here’s an example:

You’ll remember a couple of fun shoots I did last year. I blogged them here and here. I had high hopes that they’d turn out to be part of something promising. I was (and am) willing to try to bring a little science flavouring to places where it is not normally found, to audiences who don’t normally seek out science programming. Who knows where that can lead? But… the show turned out to be, how shall I put it? Low on science and high on… other stuff, shall we say.

The show I’m talking about is on Spike TV and it is called MANswers. I always knew it was going to be close to the mark, but was willing to take the risk just in case it got a few people thinking about science for a second or two or more. My reasons? No […] Click to continue reading this post →

My Work Here is Done

By | | , , , ,
1 Comment

lexington visit Yep. All done. Sitting in great cafe with a cup of camomile, listening to one of my favourite Mingus albums on the cafe’s overhead speakers, feeling that it all went well. (The latter – Mingus in a great cafe late at night? – is not really the Kentucky I remember.) I seem to have gone three for three. Class, seminar, colloquium. No disasters, besides skimping on the sleep a bit here and there and writing some of the material at the last minute. Good.

So I gave the seminar at noon, talking about much the same material I did in my Santa Barbara talk I mentioned before here. We then went to lunch at a Korean place nearby that was rather good. I ordered the bi bim bap (as I often do at Korean places) and to my disappointment, it did not come in the super high temperature near-molten […] Click to continue reading this post →

A Return

By | | , , , ,
6 Comments

I’m in Lexington, Kentucky, for a couple of days to give three presentations at the University of Kentucky (or “UK” as everyone refers to it here – I hope that explains the previous post). I should be preparing two of them instead of blogging, but… you know how it is. Here’s how I got here:

lexington visit On Wednesday afternoon, after a class on magnetostatics, and an attendance of a lunchtime event where four of our faculty (Biology, Geology, Cosmology (our very own Elena Pierpaoli!), Biology) presented their research, I dashed for a plane. Some hours later, at 10:45pm local time, I touched down in Chicago, and 15 minutes later was on the highway in the company (and car) of Nick Halmagyi.

Our mission? To hang out for a few hours in an excellent bar or two of his acquaintance and catch up on what’s been going on with each other, workwise and otherwise. The Charleston was indeed excellent, and (after chortling a bit about the memory of my annoyance at being charged $29 for a serving of a single malt scotch in a bar in Aspen during the Summer) proceeded to order the same here (he the Macallan, me the Talisker). At about 1:00am, the music stops and a guy with a face full of character sits down at the upright piano, is introduced to a scattering of applause, and proceeds to play some Chopin. Everybody shuts up and turns to listen. Appropriately, the piano sounds like all upright pianos in all bars all around the world sound (the tuning is just a bit wobbly), and the guy is good – really good. He stops playing the piece, and there’s some more scattered applause; someone (jokingly?) offers his a dollar as he walks away which he waves away enthusiastically; the music comes back up, and everybody turns back to their conversations. Nick and I continue to chat about various aspects of life, and order a couple more whiskeys.

At 1:25am or so we wander over to another bar. Nick seems a bit surprised by my suggestion to do this (‘cos I’m supposed to be going to sleep), but I’m just enjoying walking for a bit in the cold, wearing a cozy hat and coat that normally get no use these days, and there’s something nice about a proper bar hop in a neighbourhood with good bars and in the company of someone who appreciates it. This bar has an […] Click to continue reading this post →

Remembering Bob Miller

By | | , , ,
6 Comments

___________________________________________________________________________________
The Artist and Science educator Bob Miller died on Sunday. This is very sad news indeed. He and his work may be familiar to many of you from San Francisco’s Exploratorium.

categorically not - really?I met him only once, on the evening of April 23rd 2006 at a Categorically Not! event. From that short time I got a sense of his enthusiasm for explaining many phenomena in optics and other aspects of physics to anyone who would listen. He was a unique and highly original person in every positive sense of those words, and his passing is a great loss. The Cat Not! event during which I saw him in action (see clickable image on right) describing optical illusions and other phenomena was one of the most delightful such evenings that I can recall. After re-reading my report on the event, I thought I’d share it with you as a celebration of his life. It is the previous post, and it has links to some of Bob’s work.

Bob Miller was a dear friend of science writer K. C. Cole, and so (with her permission) I am reproducing here a piece that she wrote about Bob Miller not too long ago. It is a fitting tribute. -cvj
___________________________________________________________________________________

The physicist Frank Oppenheimer used to say that artists and scientists are the official “noticers” of society—people whose business it is to notice things that other people either never learned to see or have learned to ignore.

I’ve never known anyone with quite the knack for noticing as San Francisco artist Bob Miller, and since I’ve known him, countless things I used to think quite ordinary have been animated by his imagination. Once he asked me: How would you suspend 500,000 pounds of water in the air with no visible means of support? […] Click to continue reading this post →

Really Excellent

By | | , , , , , , ,
3 Comments

___________________________________________________________________________________
This was originally posted on Cosmic Variance on May 3rd 2006. It was a report on the Categorically Not! event that took place on 23rd April 2006, entitled “Really?”. I’ve decided to reproduce it here as a happy memory of the wonder that Artist and Educator Bob Miller brought into the lives of many. (See next post.) It was a marvellous event overall (probably my favourite Cat Not! event), with several excellent presentations, and so I’ll reproduce the post in its entirety (with slight corrections) to give you a sense of the evening. -cvj
___________________________________________________________________________________

Well, apologies to all concerned for taking so long to post this, but here it is. The Categorically Not! two Sundays ago was -as usual- extremely enjoyable and informative. This one was all about Illusion, in some sense, the theme being “Really?”.

categorically not! Really image

We started out with a few opening remarks by Bob Miller, who specialises in what categorically not! Really image some might call “light art”. He’s well known for creating a large number of wonderful works using light and shadow, several of them forming the cornerstone of exhibitions in the Exploratorium in San Francisco, for example. Have a look at the “lightwalk”, linked here.

Bob did not talk much, because he wanted everyone to just play, learning from getting involved. And play they did. He’d been up all night preparing (with KC Cole’s help) various fun things for people to do (see the table in the picture above, for example). All simple, and all with a little printed explanation about what to do, and the operation of the thing they were playing with or effect they were seeing.
[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Inside Out from the Inside

By | | , , , ,
3 Comments

Last night’s Categorically Not! – Inside Out event was just great. The three topics contrasted really nicely, were very well presented as individual topics in their own right, and there were resonances between the different topics through the main umbrella theme – “Inside Out”.

Science writers Sandy Blakeslee and her son Matt Blakeslee did a sort of tag team presentation, taking turns to build up several aspects of the subject (covered in their new book “The Body Has a Mind of Its Own”) of one’s sense of self and that all-so-important division between inside (ourself) and outside (the rest of the universe) that we make with our minds. sandy blakesleeIt’s very dynamic, of course – you extend it a lot when you use tools, from a fork when eating to the car you’re driving in (everyone grunted in recognition when Sandy mentioned how you have the instinct to duck when driving under a low ceiling in a parking garage….). One of the things that I think resonated most with the audience is the description of the work on showing how many celebrated “out of body” experiences that people get have a foundation in […] Click to continue reading this post →

Categorically Not! – Inside Out

By | | , , , , ,
2 Comments

Paul Stein of Los Angeles PhilharmonicThe next Categorically Not! is a Blue* one! It’s on Sunday October 28th (tomorrow). The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with occasional exceptions). It’s a series – started and run by science writer K. C. Cole – of fun and informative conversations deliberately ignoring the traditional boundaries between art, science, humanities, and other subjects. I strongly encourage you to come to them if you’re in the area.

Here is the website that describes past ones, and upcoming ones. See also the links at the end of the post for some announcements and descriptions (and even video) of previous events. (Above right: The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Paul Stein demonstrating “small differences” on the violin, in the event with that theme.)

The theme this month is Inside Out Here’s the description from K C Cole: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Hack!

By | | , , , , ,
1 Comment

I don’t know if you’ve been watching the new PBS series WIRED Science, but I recommend that you give it a try. There was another excellent episode Wednesday night, covering topics as diverse as organ regeneration, neutrino oscillations, and research in supersymmetry (interview of Jim Gates by Zia). You can see video of lots of the segments here.

To my delight there was another excellent new short segment, called “Hack”, again done by Chris Hardwick in the studio. Recall I spoke about the “What’s Inside” pieces a few weeks ago. “Hack” shows you how to make something familiar, as opposed to just find out what’s inside something. In this one, Chris (who’s impressively very funny while he does the chemistry: : “a funnel…’cos it’s got the word `fun’ in it”) shows you how chemoluminescence works by demonstrating how to reproduce what glow sticks do! Here’s the video:

While I’m on the subject, there’s some news over on my other blogging gig, […] Click to continue reading this post →

First Watson, Now Holmes

By | | ,
15 Comments

As a headline, it’s a cheap link, I know, but it was irresistible. The point is that the comet Holmes suddenly got much brighter and is now beginning to do a naked eye display. How much brighter? It went from magnitude 17 to magnitude 2.8 over the course of a few hours. David Morrison (at NASA) who writes a newsletter about near earth objects (NEO) gives an analogy: “This is equivalent to the planet Saturn suddenly becoming as bright as the full moon.”

Before you go wild, based on this, know that […] Click to continue reading this post →

Tales From The Industry XIII – Magnetic Moments

By | | , , , , , , ,
4 Comments

[Post reconstructed after 25.10.07 hack]:

magnetism shoot

The strange object pictured above is a rather nice demonstration of the “field lines” around a bar magnet. It is not a great photo (all my fault), but the demo is great. The designers suspended the tiny bits of iron in oil, inside a sealed chamber, forming a block. There’s a little cylindrical hole through the centre of the block (but still outside the chamber) that allows you to put a bar magnet in. This makes for a demo far more exciting than any shake-it-up snow scene: You shake block and the iron filings are all over the oil in three dimensions, randomly arranged. You then insert the magnet. They slowly but determinedly arrange themselves into the familiar pattern, in three dimensions. It’s great. (Why didn’t they have these when I was growing up?! I might have gone into science… Oh, wait…)

I was looking around one of our demo labs last week for things to use to demonstrate some of the principal effects of magnetism. The above demonstration was one of the […] Click to continue reading this post →