Hi everyone! This week, I was traveling to Park City, Utah, to participate in the 3-week Park City Mathematics Institute. It’s currently a blast! I have more time now, but in the meantime, I asked my good friend Mike Schmidt to write a guest article for me. He wrote on probability which, if you’ve been reading for a while you know, is deeply connected to modern physics. Anyway, here’s the article. Thanks, Mike! The laws of Probability So true in general So fallacious in particular. ~Edward Gibson Probability is just so fantastic, I could eat it all up.
Computer Related
R.I.P. Douglas Engelbart
Did you use a mouse recently? Did you type on a keyboard? Did you click on a link? Connect to a computer network? Odds are, if you’re reading this, you have. You can thank Douglas Engelbart (1925–2013) for all of these inventions and more. In December 1950, Engelbart had it all. He was engaged to be married, had a good job as a radar technician, and was generally doing well for himself. At this point, he decided that this wasn’t good enough. He decided he wanted to improve the world and that, although they were in their infancy, computers
cosmology / Physics / Relativity / etc.
Fixing the Early Universe: Cosmic Inflation
Expansion means complexity and complexity decay. ~Cyril Northcote Parkinson This is part three of a series on the early universe. In the first article, I described the history of the Big Bang theory and why we believe the universe started in a colossal explosion. In the second article, I described some inconsistencies in the Big Bang theory that need correcting. Now I’ll explain how the theory of cosmic inflation addresses these inconsistencies and why we might believe it in inflation. This explanation will use ideas from quantum mechanics and general relativity; you can find my articles on these subjects
Education / Physics / Science And Math
How I Got Interested in Physics and in STEM
The Google+ community, +STEM on Google+ Community, is asking people to share how they got interested in STEM. The format is a video. I decided that for this week, I’d record such a video and share it with you all. This is the first time I’ve ever done any kind of video recording, so this was a new experience for me. Hope you like it!
cosmology / Geometry / Mathematics / etc.
A Mess of Cosmic Coincidences: Problems With the Big Bang Theory
The furthest bodies To which man sends his Speculation, Beyond which God is; The cosmic motes Of yawning lenses. ~Robert Frost, I Will Sing You One-0 I apologize for the long time of silence! I graduated from the University of Colorado about a month ago and was immediately assaulted by a huge amount of family affairs… and then caught up in moving. Sorry about this, everyone! My regular Sunday update schedule should resume next week. Last time, I described the theory of the Big Bang. I gave some history of the theory, and some reasons for why we believe
Uncategorized
Moving
Sorry everyone. No new post this week. I meant to get it up late Sunday, but I never managed. I’m currently busy moving out of my old apartment. The lease ends this Friday and I’m kind of in a rush because of this. Normal posts resume next week.
Uncategorized
Kiera Wilmot Charges Dropped
A little while back, I posted about Kiera Wilmot, a student who was expelled for performing a science experiment on school grounds. Worse, Ms. Wilmot faced felony charges. I also posted about what you can do to help her. Good news! Our efforts payed off! All charges against Kiera Wilmot have been dropped! Unfortunately, Ms. Wilmot’s future in the school system is still uncertain. However, at least some of the injustice has been remedied. I got my information here.Thanks very much to Dan Satterfield for pointing it out!
cosmology / Physics / Relativity / etc.
Always Walk Away From An Explosion—The Story of the Big Bang
We were fortunate to be there a day or two before ‘the big bang’ and then we got the heck out of town. ~Scotty Moore A few weeks ago, +Matthew Villaneuva asked the following question on Google+: Does anybody else find the Big Bang (the scientific explanation on how the universe got created) weird? Actually, yes! Just a century ago, everyone believed that the universe was static—i.e., that it had always existed and that it would always continue to exist. Even Albert Einstein held this view. I previously explained why we know the universe is expanding, so I’m going
Geometry / Mathematics / Physics / etc.
An Update On Kaluza-Klein Theory
I recently posted an article on Kaluza-Klein theory. This was partly because I was working a paper on it as a final project in my second semester of general relativity. The paper is finished, and I thought I’d upload it for the more mathematically inclined of my readers. If you’re interested, you can find it here.
Physics / Science And Math
Faster than a Speeding Pony: Why We Do Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations
This post will be rather short because I’m in the middle of finals. Of course, if you follow me regularly, you also know that I’ve posted rather a lot this week. When I’m exhausted from studying, it’s much easier to write in short bursts, which might explain all the short posts recently. While reading this article, I recently found the following video, in which a fan of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic demonstrates the physics impossibilities in a few scenes of his favorite show. Let’s watch it, and then I’ll explain why I showed it to you. (A