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The author of Skulls in the Stars is a professor of physics, specializing in optical science, at UNC Charlotte. The blog covers topics in physics and optics, the history of science, classic pulp fantasy and horror fiction, and the surprising intersections between these areas. -
Author Archives: skullsinthestars
How anti-vaccination is like a nuclear bomb
Update: tweaked the descriptions of nuclear physics to be a little more specific. I’m not sure that anything fills me with despair more than the trend of parents refusing to vaccinate their children. A couple of weeks ago, an article … Continue reading
Posted in ... the Hell?, General science, Health
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Dr. SkySkull’s Monday Cavalcade of Interesting Science Stuff – September 15, 2014
While I’m working on more detailed blog posts, here’s a collection of interesting science-related stuff I came across over the past week! Buddhist singing bowls inspire new tandem solar cell design. A surprising amount of optics design is inspired by … Continue reading
Posted in General science, Science news
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Dr. SkySkull’s Monday Cavalcade of Interesting Science Stuff – September 8, 2014
In order to make my blogging a little more regular, I thought I would start doing a weekly roundup of interesting science-based posts from around the internet! Also, there’s so much good stuff out there that should be shared. With … Continue reading
Posted in General science, Science news
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Physics demonstrations: Faraday disk
I’m prepping a new course to teach this semester: undergraduate Electromagnetism II! I’m trying to put together some nice simple demos to illustrate principles in the class, and I’ll blog some of those that work and are interesting. When Michael … Continue reading
Posted in Physics, Physics demos
23 Comments
7 years of blogging!
I’ve been rather busy with my academic duties lately and haven’t had much time to update my blog with new science and fiction posts. Because of this, I almost completely missed the fact that August 14th marked the 7th anniversary … Continue reading
Posted in Personal
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Fred Hoyle’s “The Black Cloud”
I am utterly fascinated by active scientists who also write fiction, particularly science fiction. There have been more of them than the average person realizes, including physicist Robert W. Wood, who co-wrote The Man Who Rocked the Earth (1915) and The Moon-Maker … Continue reading
Posted in Science fiction
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Emily Carroll’s Through the Woods
Let me say this immediately: Emily Carroll’s work is amazing. Her work first came to my attention, as it did for many people, through an io9 post describing some of the best horror webcomics available. The post included a link … Continue reading
Posted in Horror
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H.G. Wells’ stories about BUGS
Update: Added one more Wells bug story! This short post is something of a public service. Earlier today I saw some tweets from film critic Scott Weinberg referencing an urban legend related to the very silly 1977 Bert I. Gordon film Empire … Continue reading
Posted in Horror, Science fiction
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Physics demonstrations: Geiger counter
Update: Fixed a couple of incorrect statements regarding cosmic rays and the radiation of uranium. Thanks to encephalartos for the corrections! In recent months, I’ve been diving wholeheartedly into learning how to build and design electronics. My ultimate goal is … Continue reading
Posted in Physics demos
6 Comments
Cloaking from earthquakes?
There has been a lot of excitement among researchers about the science of invisibility over the past decade, and a variety of designs of invisibility cloaks have been suggested since the groundbreaking 2006 papers. I’ve talked a lot about invisibility … Continue reading
Posted in Invisibility
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Skulls in the Stars 