Bohemian Gravity
Delighted to share this video of String Theory set to Bohemian Rapsody by A Capella Science. This video and two others are the work of Timothy Blaise, a graduate student in theorectical physics at McGill University. Enjoy!
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The Science of Big Science
Science is getting bigger. Just about every scientific discipline — astronomy, conservation, drug development, genetics, neuroscience, physics — is organizing massive collaborations of researchers in the name of reaching massive goals. These so-called Big Science efforts have big budgets, big lists of participating institutions, big press coverage, and big pronouncements. Big Science isn’t new (the…
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Miraculous Conception: Are Planets Forming Without Stars?
One of the most remarkable discoveries about exoplanets—planets that exist outside of our solar system—is that some of them appear to be flying through interstellar space on their own. They’re not orbiting a star, nor are they tied to any other obvious companion. The precise number of these planets—alternately called “free-floating,” “Steppenwolf,” “unbound,” or “rogue”…
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Parallel Worlds
Andy Murray’s unexpectedly strong start against Roger Federer in the Wimbledon 2012 final put the Daily Telegraph columnist Matthew Norman in a science-fiction mood. ‘It seemed we’d been transported to one of those parallel universes into which Doctor Who likes to slip with insouciant ease,’ he commented. A year later, that alternative world became reality,…
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Enough Already With This ‘Theory Of Everything’
Last week I wrote about some of the themes from my book A Tear at the Edge of Creation. Today, I want to briefly state the reasons why a so-called “Theory Of Everything” (TOE) is an impossibility. We have to do away with this idea for once and for all. First, let me say what…
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Four Reasons You Shouldn’t Exist
You’re almost unfathomably lucky to exist, in almost every conceivable way. Don’t take it the wrong way. You, me, and even the most calming manatee are nothing but impurities in an otherwise beautifully simple universe. We’re lucky life began on Earth at all, of course, and that something as complex as humans evolved. It was…
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Are We Martians After All?
If you looked in a mirror this morning, you may have seen a descendant of creatures from Mars. That is, if biochemist Steven Benner of the Westheimer Institute of Science and Technology in Gainesville, Florida, is right. “Life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock,” Benner declares. Today, at the European Association…
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Researchers Grow 3-D Human Brain Tissues
Scientists at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna, Austria, have grown three-dimensional human brain tissues from stem cells. The tissues form discrete structures that are seen in the developing brain. The Vienna researchers found that immature brain cells derived from stem cells self-organize into brain-like tissues in the right culture conditions. The “cerebral organoids,”…
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The Proof in the Quantum Pudding
In early May, news reports gushed that a quantum computation device had for the first time outperformed classical computers, solving certain problems thousands of times faster. The media coverage sent ripples of excitement through the technology community. A full-on quantum computer, if ever built, would revolutionize large swathes of computer science, running many algorithms dramatically…
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The Truth is No Stranger Than Fiction When it Comes to Robots
Robots represent the cutting edge in science. For decades we have been promised a bright future in which these human-like machines will become so advanced that we won’t be able to tell the difference between them and us. But are technologists really dabbling in the unknown in their work or merely ripping a page out…