HuffPost Science

22 Aug

Big Bang? Or Big Freeze?

Now, a team of physicists says the Big Bang should be modeled as a phase change: the moment when an amorphous, formless universe analogous to liquid water cooled and suddenly crystallized to form four-dimensional space-time, analogous to ice.

11 Jul

33 Physicists To Follow On Twitter

Do you follow them yet? You should. Get on it!

Or subscribe directly to one of our Twitter lists here.

10 Jul

Happy Birthday to Nikola Tesla, a man truly before his time

3 Jul

And then all the scientists to the media were like

CERN is expected to make a huge announcement this Wednesday on the evidence of the Higgs Boson.

8 Jun

jtotheizzoe:

The Last Nail in the Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Coffin

Rest easy, folks. Einstein’s legacy and theories are safe. CERN released a statement today reporting that several follow-up experiments have made it clear that last year’s claims of neutrinos being clocked at faster than the speed of light were incorrect (my collected posts on the whole saga).

It wasn’t relativity, or strange physics, or the movement of the Earth’s crust that led to the odd result, either. It was a loose cable.

I’m not sure what the fallout will be for people’s trust in science, or science news, or boys crying wolf. People paid attention to something very exciting, and many of us learned something new about physics that we never would have. But part of it was a result of people overblowing overblown overblownalities. A trade-off of integrity and education. I tend to agree with CERN’s Sergio Bertolucci:

The story captured the public imagination, and has given people the opportunity to see the scientific method in action – an unexpected result was put up for scrutiny, thoroughly investigated and resolved in part thanks to collaboration between normally competing experiments. That’s how science moves forward.

And move forward we will. Just not faster than the speed of light.

29 May

When I got home that evening, I cried. Not because I felt sorry for him, or because I realized what it is that I probably take for granted every day. I cried because I felt a fundamentally human urge to connect with this man — an icon of brilliance in a world sorely lacking — and I simply couldn’t figure out how.

— Cara Santa Maria, “My Evening With Stephen Hawking” (http://huff.to/JL6yh8)

Electrons rule our world, but not so long ago they were only an idea. This month marks the 120th anniversary of a profound and influential creation, the electron theory of Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz. His electron was not merely a hypothesized elementary particle; it was the linchpin of an ambitious theory of nature. Today physicists are accustomed to the notion that a complete description of nature can rise out of simple, beautiful equations, yet prior to Lorentz that was a mystic vision.

Read the full story from SciAm here: http://huff.to/K5Dr65

26 Apr

Imagining living in a universe without purpose may prepare us to better face reality head on. I cannot see that this is such a bad thing. Living in a strange and remarkable universe that is the way it is, independent of our desires and hopes, is far more satisfying for me than living in a fairy-tale universe invented to justify our existence.

— Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe Without Purpose (http://huff.to/JFmvFd)

24 Apr

I know that the molecules in my body are traceable to phenomena in the cosmos. That makes me want to grab people on the street and say: ‘Have you HEARD THIS?

— Neil DeGrasse Tyson (Happy National Physics Day!)