Earthquake hits Chicago area!

Posted on February 10, 2010 by skullsinthestars

Man, I miss all the cool stuff that happens in Chicago!  Via the Chicago Sun Times:

A 3.8 magnitude  earthquake rattled the western suburbs early this morning. There were no reports of damage after the 3:59 a.m. quake, centered about 6 miles west of Elgin.

The U.S. Geological Survey originally estimated the quake at a magnitude of 4.3 and centered a few miles further west, but recalculated the quake after more information came in, according to USGS earthquake analyst Don Blakeman.

I’ll have to check with my family to see if they felt it, as the epicenter was less than 10 miles from them.

Posted in Science news | 2 Comments

I’ll stick with my parachute, thanks

Posted on February 9, 2010 by skullsinthestars

Via Daily Kos, I came across this interesting article in Popular Mechanics: How to Fall 35,000 Feet — and Survive:

You have a late night and an early flight. Not long after takeoff, you drift to sleep. Suddenly, you’re wide awake. There’s cold air rushing everywhere, and sound. Intense, horrible sound. Where am I?, you think. Where’s the plane?

You’re 6 miles up. You’re alone. You’re falling.

Things are bad. But now’s the time to focus on the good news. (Yes, it goes beyond surviving the destruction of your aircraft.) Although gravity is against you, another force is working in your favor: time. Believe it or not, you’re better off up here than if you’d slipped from the balcony of your high-rise hotel room after one too many drinks last night.

It’s a rather overly dramatic article, but very entertaining and thought-provoking.  As a skydiver, I’ve often wondered what would be my strategy if I had a total malfunction of both my main and reserve parachutes.

Continue reading →

Posted in ... the Hell?, General science | 1 Comment

ResearchBlogging editor’s selections: demoting gravity, dinosaur colors, flexible water, and girls v. boys

Posted on February 8, 2010 by skullsinthestars

Finally, let me note a practical post by Dr. Shock at Dr. Shock MD PhD: research on 10 Websites With The Best Information on Depression.

Check back next Monday for more “miscellaneous” highlights!

Posted in General science, Science news | Leave a comment

Mythbusters were scooped — by 130 years! (Archimedes death ray)

Posted on February 7, 2010 by skullsinthestars

Searching through old journals results in wonderfully serendipitous moments.  I originally started searching through the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for articles by Lord Kelvin, but along the way have found all sorts of interesting and thought-provoking papers.

A few weeks ago I noted that one article, “On the bursting of firearms when the muzzle is closed by snow, earth, grease, &c.”, foreshadowed later attempts by the MythBusters to test whether the barrel of a gun will “banana peel” when fired with a plug in it.  About the same time, however, and in an earlier volume of the Proceedings, I found an article with the title, “On the burning mirrors of Archimedes, and on the Concentration of light produced by reflectors,” by John Scott.  This article is also an investigation of a myth that would be tackled some 130 years later by the MythBusters!  Apparently the 1870s-1880s were a good era for ‘busting!

Continue reading →

Posted in History of science | 35 Comments

Now on Twitter!

Posted on February 3, 2010 by skullsinthestars

I really vowed that I would never “tweet”, but I seem to have found myself with a Twitter account anyway!  I can be found “tweeting” as drskyskull, if anyone is interested in following.

I’ve been part of a group in my department brainstorming ideas for internet outreach and communications.  Since I suggested that a department Twitter feed might be a helpful possibility, I thought I should get some experience with the medium.

I’m not sure how much I’ll be “tweeting”; this is a bit of an unknown quantity to me.  I’ll have to see how it goes…

P.S. Any iPhone Twitterers out there that can recommend a good iPhone Twitter app?

Posted in Personal | 4 Comments

12 days until The Giant’s Shoulders #20!

Posted on February 3, 2010 by skullsinthestars

There’s 12 days left until the deadline for The Giant’s Shoulders #20!  It will be held at The Lay Scientist, and entries can be submitted through blogcarnival.com or directly to the host blog, as usual!

On a related note, we REALLY need some more hosts for the carnival — The Lay Scientist is the last one currently scheduled!  If you’ve got a blog and want to see the history of science carnival continue, please consider being a host!

Posted in General science, Science news | 7 Comments

Which Winston Churchill wrote “Man Overboard!”?

Posted on February 2, 2010 by skullsinthestars

Horror fiction is often burdened by the popular impression that it is the refuge of the anti-social, the unliterary, the morbid, and even the perverse.  However, a surprising number of authors of classic literature have dabbled in macabre fiction, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, (“Young Goodman Brown”, “Rappacini’s Daughter”), William Faulkner (“A Rose for Emily”), Charles Dickens (“The Signal-Man”), and Edith Wharton (“Afterward”). In addition, plenty of very successful professionals in other fields, such as journalism, medicine, and academia, have ventured into horror.

For years, the pièce de résistance in my argument in favor of the positive quality of horror authors is a little known 1899 story titled, “Man Overboard!”  The author is one Winston Churchill.  Yes, that Winston Churchill — or so I thought.

In doing background for another blog post, I Googled Churchill’s “Man Overboard!”, and was surprised to find that there were in fact two famous Winston Churchills in that era — the British politician (1874-1965), and a very famous American author of the same name (1871-1947).  So which one wrote the story?

Continue reading →

Posted in ... the Hell?, Horror | 9 Comments

ResearchBlogging editor’s selections: Doctor Who and the Silver Spiral, running wrong, un-natural disasters and ugly avatars

Posted on February 1, 2010 by skullsinthestars
  • Doctor Who and the Silver Spiral. Via Megan at Rigel, follow Doctor Who as he travels to the Silver Spiral and explains the physics behind a supernova!
  • Evo. Anthro. Study Suggests You Might Be Running Wrong. I always suspected something like this! Brian at Laelaps describes research that suggests that fancy running shoes don’t reduce impact injuries as much as adopting a good barefoot running style.
  • Un-Natural Disasters. Bryan at In Terra Veritas discusses an intriguing way to look at “natural” disasters: though due to natural processes, most of the “disaster” part comes from a lack of risk management.
  • You and your ugly avatar. The virtual world has proven to be a fascinating laboratory for studying social interactions! David Bradley at Sciencetext describes research on the relationship between the appearance of one’s online avatar and the attention that avatar receives from others.

Check back next Monday for more “miscellaneous” highlights!

Posted in General science, Science news | Leave a comment

To describe, or not to describe…

Posted on January 29, 2010 by skullsinthestars

In a recent post, Chad at Uncertain Principles addresses an interesting criticism of one of his posts.  In short, he attempted to summarize the essential features of quantum mechanics that set it apart from other, classical theories of physics.  As Chad notes,

So, what’s the issue? The strongest single objection probably comes from Peter Morgan, who didn’t like my element 2):

2) Quantum states are discrete. The “quantum” in quantum physics refers to the fact that everything in quantum physics comes in discrete amounts. A beam of light can only contain integer numbers of photons– 1, 2, 3, 137, but never 1.5 or 22.7. An electron in an atom can only have certain discrete energy values– -13.6 electron volts, or -3.4 electron volts in hydrogen, but never -7.5 electron volts. No matter what you do, you will only ever detect a quantum system in one of these special allowed states.

He commented:

NOOOO!!!!! You need to talk about measurement operators, not about states, if you want to say “discrete”.

Perhaps: Measurement operators that have discrete spectra are used to represent measurement apparatus/procedures that produce discrete measurement results. Measurement operators that have continuous spectra are idealizations that do not correspond to real experimental data that is written in lab books or in computer memory.

The state space is usually taken to be vectors in a Hilbert space over the complex field, or density operators (arguably always one of these, by quantum physicists?), which are pretty much continuous linear spaces.

Leaving aside the technical details, the real issue between poster and commenter is one that’s often on my mind: how much description is necessary to properly explain a physical phenomenon?  This is relevant not just to authors of blog posts, but also to educators in general.  Science is complicated, and we want to simplify it as much as possible for our students/readers.  There is clearly some point, however, at which the simplifying just becomes misleading.  The question, then, is: how does one draw the line?

Continue reading →

Posted in Physics | 3 Comments

ResearchBlogging editor’s selections: Noble savages, dark materials, and artistic science

Posted on January 25, 2010 by skullsinthestars

I’m a little delayed this week, because I’m at a science conference in San Francisco and, surprisingly, internet access is somewhat scarce. Nevertheless, here are this week’s selections:

  • Were the Maya noble savages? Everyone knows that the Mayan civilization collapsed around 700 AD, but people are still not sure why. The most popular explanation is that the Mayans wrecked their own ecosystem through deforestation, but were they really that careless? Thomas Kluyver at Thomas’ Plant-Related Blog considers the cons of the explanation.
  • Dark Materials. From Brian Koberlein at Upon Reflection, we get a nice discussion of the idea of dark matter and the evidence for its existence — including in our own galaxy.
  • Can science be artistic? Finally, nuclear.kelly at Miss Atomic Bomb describes a challenge in science communication given to her graduate students: write a fictional story about your research! She illustrates the challenge with her own story.

Check back next Monday for more miscellaneous selections!

Posted in General science, Science news | Leave a comment