Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Tag: physics

  • Total Eclipse

      A friend invited others to her parent’s house inside the totality. It was fantastic placement very near the center of totality, so we got to see it for a couple minutes rather than a few seconds just inside totality. [Photo album] I experienced the annular eclipses in 1984 and 1994. I was a kid…

  • Review: Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang

    Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang by Paul J. Steinhardt My rating: 3 of 5 stars Tone of this book felt defensive. Too much reliance on ad hominems? I like the ekpyrotic theory presented by the authors and hope theirs is what wins out over the Big Bang. View all my reviews

  • Review: Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe

    Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh My rating: 4 of 5 stars This one falls along the lines of the Elegant Universe as a history of science. Going back to Greek philosophers and moving through developments in understanding the Universe, Singh explains the findings and the contemporary reactions. And also how…

  • God Lives 9 Light Years Away

    This passage comes from the book Big Bang. [George] Gamow was infamous for his limericks and his sometimes offbeat application of physics. On one occasion, he argued God lived 9.5 light years from the Earth. This estimate  relied on the fact that in 1904, at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, churches across Russia had…

  • Challenger

    Twenty-five years ago today my teachers had us all gather in a classroom. A teacher was being sent into orbit. The intent was for us to see a historic event. Instead we got to see even bigger history being made as the Space Shuttle exploded 73 seconds after launch. The disintegration of the vehicle was…

  • Cosmological Constants

    Guess I am pretty dense. As many books and TV shows as I have read or seen about Einstein, physics, and cosmology, I just understood something for the first time since it was extremely plainly laid out for me. An ever expanding universe requires one or more forces to push matter further apart: cosmological constant. Forces attract…

  • links for 2007-10-08

    Online Experiments (tags: science learning physics kids education) Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science (tags: education evolution science learning)

  • links for 2007-07-05

    Glimpse of Time Before Big Bang Possible – Yahoo! News “To see how far into history one might gaze, theoretical physicist Martin Bojowald at Pennsylvania State University ran calculations based on loop quantum gravity, one of a number of competing theories seeking to explain how the underlying structure of th (tags: cosmology science.astronomy universe science…

  • Dammit, Feynman!

    LOL Does this mean women are like particles? The forces of attraction and repulsion are the Strong and Weak Nuclear Forces.