You never would’ve guessed that nuclear physics could be this easy. “Mr. Burns: Smithers, hand me that ice-cream scoop.Smithers: Ice-cream scoop?Mr. Burns: Damn it, Smithers! This isn’t rocket science, it’s brain […]
Search Results
You searched for: Physical Constants
I was just thinking, which, it turns out, the brain does not like to do. At least not the purposeful, effortful, stay-focused kind. It’s work to think, to pay attention.
“We, The US And Our Allies…” –Wait A Minute, What Allies? NEWS just spread through the international media that China may be overtaking the United States on GDP terms by […]
How the mis-application of the Anthropic Principle has led factions of scientists away from the search for a natural, physical explanation of our Universe, and why that’s bad for everyone. […]
Joel Turner was only 19 when three men broke into his house and stabbed him to death. His mother, Janet Connors, had already spent four decades as a social activist […]
When all the galaxies, stars, gas, dust, dark matter and all the other forms of matter and radiation are summed together, its energy still pales in comparison to dark energy. […]
UPDATE 5/26/14: I wrote this post before Elliot Rodger’s killing spree. The study I describe is, strictly speaking, about rape, but its notion of a connection between male shame and […]
From why they stay frozen in the middle to how the crisping sleeve works! “Is your Hot Pocket cold in the middle?”“It’s frozen. But it can be served boiling lava hot.”“Will […]
The only way out is to modify the laws of gravity, and new constraints rule those modifications out. “The discrepancy between what was expected and what has been observed has […]
Is there an origin to time itself, and if so, what did it look like? “In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry […]
“And so is the type of great men that shaped European history a very particular figure: half warrior, half statesman…” –Richard Wilhelm, 1922. MOST scholars believe themselves to be a […]
In 1887, two scientists set out to measure how the speed of light changed with the Earth’s motion. What they *didn’t* find wound up changing the world. “The conclusions, the bizarre […]
How the most powerful telescope ever built will owe its successes and discoveries to scientists who’ll never get the glory. “The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without […]
Do changes in a gravitational field propagate instantaneously, at the speed of light, or at a different speed altogether? “The only problem with the speed of light, is it gets […]
Plus a bonus: perhaps the single most important achievement to all of humanity. “What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the Moon, […]
If we knew all we do about math and physics, but had never seen the heavens, what would we conclude? “Both the solutions must be rejected, and as these are […]
How our best physical understanding of the early stages of the Universe — that set up the hot Big Bang — inevitably leads us to conclude that there’s a lot more than what’s merely […]
“How do you do that?” young Charlie Parker would ask older musicians. “Would you please do that again?” Those who know jazz, or who only know of jazz greats such […]
Many characteristics of the sociopathic personality—charm, ambition and impatience, an ability to attack problems with cold-hearted logic (not letting emotions get in the way)—are useful to society.
Who you are a lot of the time is a reflection of what other people have told you.
The negative consequences of conducting relationships at arm’s length, round-the-clock, and simultaneously, and only with those who reinforce one’s worldview.
This past weekend the 2013 CrossFit games ended, once again crowning Rich Froning as the fittest man on Earth. CrossFit is a combination of high intensity workouts that combine power […]
“What we’re seeing here, this guy is the Leonardo da Vinci—the Albert Einstein—of tennis.”
It seems to me that our communication will begin in terms of mathematics and physics.
“Poe is one of the writers who make us who we are,” wrote E. L. Doctorow. So how is it that Poe’s countrymen could be so hostile to the man? As it turns out, there was villainy at work.
Vivian Maier took about 150,000 pictures during her lifetime, but never showed a single one to another living soul. When she died in April 2009, Vivian was remembered as a […]
This is the basis of what we call creativity: not a deus ex machina scrawling on a tabula rasa, but the mind’s constant search for interesting new ways of grouping the data we’re constantly taking in.
The top rung of Patanjali’s eight-limbed Ashtanga ladder, Samadhi, has been defined in numerous ways. Usually associated with the last step before enlightenment, it is translated as ‘ecstasy,’ and has […]
If your smartphone is glued to your hand, then, we believe you are already a kind of Cyborg.
As we learn about things more deeply and more deeply, we will discover that in fact, there’s all kinds of peripheral work to be done that we couldn’t have even imagined looking forward.