I really like Stephen Wolfram’s book A New Kind of Science (or NKS for short) – on how simple computational programs can create amazingly complex things. I’m also really enamored with the iPad (I’ve written about it before a number of times…). Now, two of my favorite things are coming together – Wolfram’s NKS is
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It’s almost like a cosmic hurricane warning signal… From Bad Astronomy: “So, what’s the deal with Betelgeuse? What is it, will it explode, and if so, when?” The constellation Orion’s biggest star is Betelgeuse (pronounced “beetle-juice”), a red supergiant, and it’s one of the brightest stars in the sky - that’s the “what”. Will it explode?
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Recent discovery of a new supernova may lead to questions about dark matter theory. Science aficionados know that there appears to be more gravitational attraction than can be explained by the matter that we can see. So, in order for the extra gravity to be there, it’s been theorized that there must be extra matter
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Stephen Wolfram recently gave a talk about his efforts to understand the universe around us through computation. He’s the CEO and founder of Wolfram Research, creator of Mathematica, and author of A New Kind of Science. Wolfram recently launches his computational knowledge engine, Wolfram|Alpha (I wrote a post about its launch some time back…). Here’s the video
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Last week, Nancy Atkinson posted on Universe Today that astronomers are now understanding why they’ve missed 90% of the observable galaxies, and, with new tools, are now able to see them. Here’s a paragraph from Atkinson’s article: “Astronomers have long known that many surveys of distant galaxies miss 90% of their targets, but they didn’t
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Element 112 has an official name – Copernicium – named after the 16th-century Polish scientist Nicholas Copernicus, who first theorized that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Copernicium’s periodic element symbol is Cn. While the name was announced some time back, it became official only recently. Wonder how this would look in the periodic table
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In a previous post, I mentioned that the Large Hadron Collider was starting their official research program, seeking to smash protons together in the 17-mile tunnel at energies of 7 trillion electron-volts (7 TeV). Well, they did it! The record was officially achieved today, breaking its previous record. You can read more about the events
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Discover Magazine has a really good article about some of today’s scientists that are trying to overthrow the conventional wisdom and find a more complete and accurate model for our universe. Isaac Newton presented his theory of universal gravitation in 1687, and Albert Einstein overthrew that explanation with his theory of general relativity in 1915.
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March 30, 2010, marks the date on which the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will attempt to break its own record for achieving energies near what was present at the Big Bang. Twin beams of protons, traveling with energies of 3.5 trillion electron-volts (TeV), will be directed at each other in the 17-mile round LHC, located underneath
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