Dmitry Podolsky has got his PhD from Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics. He currently works as postdoc at Case Western Reserve University. He is also one of the editors of NEQNET.

Three last Susskind’s lectures on general relativity

… that is, lectures 10, 11 and 12: gravity in 4+1 dimensions, dynamics of scalars in curved spacetimes (and behavior of gravitational potential – which is scalar), a bit of topology (Euler characteristics), Lagrangian of a relativistic massive point particle, geodesics in curved spacetime and, finally, Schwarzschild solution.

On Harvard – again

By the way, why Harvard is called Harvard? Who is it named for? I guess, everybody knows that, but for me – it was a discovery of the day. It was named for English clergyman John Harvard. Mr. Harvard together with his wife has moved from London to America in 1673. He became a clergyman [...]

Saturday’s photoguess: what are they doing?

and where are they located? (take a careful look at the lower part of the photo.) The full answer is: they took a tour at the Sultan Hassan Mosque in Cairo, Egypt. The date was June 4, 2009. The mosque is one of the largest in the world (it was built in 1256). Via uzhas_sovka.

JHEP is to be published by Springer

Just received an interesting email: Dear Colleague, we would like to inform you that as of 1st January 2010, JHEP will be published by Springer. This agreement is based on the following key principles: * The scientific community will remain in full control of all the scientific and editorial aspects of the Journal. * As [...]

Biocentrism: book review

I was asked to review the book by Dr. Robert Lanza called “Biocentrism: how life and consciousness are the keys to understand true nature of the Universe“. If you are a scientist good enough in your area of expertise, at some point you start wondering whether you can explain everything around you, every single event, [...]

Harvard near bankruptcy

Just wanted to finally end my day and go to sleep (way too much work today), but heard some news and cannot help sharing it with you. According to Boston Magazine Harvard University is to face some very serious problems. The University currently spends about 1.5 billion USD/year, it has lost several billion during crisis [...]

Small amphibian collider

Art by immortal Abstruse Goose, poetry by @Yarbo

Michio Kaku on artificial intelligence

Nowadays, it is fashionable to hypothesize that an advanced AI, when it appears, will wipe pathetic humans out of the face of the Earth (risk of unfriendly AI, as transhumanists like to call it). I think, what’s not taken into account in these considerations is that humans will evolve as well, will be willing to [...]

How many scientists fabricate or falsify their research?

This is the title of a rather intriguing paper recently published in PLos ONE. As it turns out, approximately 72% of researchers have seen at least once how their colleagues used inappropriate or incorrect methods of research. The study by Dr. Fanelli contains analysis of 28 polls offered for answer to actively working scientists. Among [...]

An exoplanet near ultracool star

New record in astrometry and exoplanetology – the authors of 0906.0544 are talking about discovery of the planet in the vicinity of a very light star. The mass of the star is about 0.07 Solar masses, i.e., equivalent to 3-9 Jupiter masses – it is actually near the lower mass limit for an object to [...]