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Recent posts
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 [...]
Jim Simons and C.N. Yang interviewed by Bill Zimmerman
… about math (geometry)/physics interplay. Yang: there are two types of modern math books – the ones which you cannot read beyond the first page and the ones which you cannot read beyond the first sentence. Stinrood is of the latter kind. LOL Simons organizes new institute (6 faculty members, around 30 visitors per year), [...]
How might one design a nano-machine?
Significant advances in laboratory techniques in tailoring and processing materials at the atomic level have resulted in nanotechnology becoming an increasingly mature field. One of the exciting goals of nanotechnology is the design of powerful nano-machines, i.e. functional entities at the nano-scale that work like macro-world machines. A simple nano-machine would be an entity that [...]
Google Wave
Everybody (Terence Tao for one) seems to be excited about forthcoming Google Wave, and so am I. Here is the video demonstrating some of the product’s features: I think, we are yet to see whether Google Wave is to become ultimate science collaboration tool (I signed up on their site – and hope they’ll get [...]
The coming collapse of the middle class
As usual on Saturdays, discussion of physics is forbidden (why? check out Old Testament). Let us talk a bit about global financial crisis instead , namely about work of Elizabeth Warren, professor of Harvard Law School. Elizabeth Warren was a senior consultant of Clinton’s National Bankruptcy Review Commission – the one which tried to figure [...]
Workshop on tests of gravity in Case Western – day 2: aether and modified gravity
Let me finally briefly review the reminder of the second day of the workshop. Justin Khoury (whom I knew from Perimeter years and who is in Penn now) gave the first talk afternoon – titled “observational hints of IR modified gravity”. His talk followed Nima’s, and the latter almost completely blew me away, so I [...]
Susskind’s general relativity – lecture 9
… where Leonard Susskind discusses spacetime – spacelike, timelike and lightlike directions, explains how one gets special relativity from general relativity (post-Newtonian approximation), non-relativistic limit of GR and finally … Einstein equations (hurray!)
Workshop on tests of gravity in Case Western – day 2 and Arkani-Hamed’s talk
The second day of the Workshop on Tests of Gravity (and here is my blog post about the first day) was mostly devoted to analog models (Bill Unruh, Michael Uhlmann, George Pickett) and models of modified gravity (Nima Arkani-Hamed, Justin Khoury, Stacy McGaugh, Ted Jacobson, Levon Pogosyan and Mark Wyman). Regarding analog models I don’t [...]
Susskind’s 8th lecture on general relativity
Leonard Susskind continues reading his lecture course on general relativity in U. of Stanford. Previous lectures can be found here: Lectures 1-5, Lecture 6 and Lecture 7. Susskind continues to discuss covariant derivatives, parallel transport of vectors, Ricci and Riemann tensors. In the second part of the lecture he turns to geodesics. He is terrific [...]
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Large non-Gaussianity from axion inflation
January 31, 2012 14:01 -
On strong disorder renormalization
March 18, 2011 20:03 -
Relaunching NEQNET
January 20, 2011 21:01 -
Saturday’s photoguess: what does this monkey symbolize?
June 20, 2009 19:06 -
Dynamics of space storm
June 19, 2009 12:06
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Micro: Can 2 question provide a common solution? Black holes, information loss paradox and Ultra high energy cosmic rays. ...
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James Ph. Kotsybar: SAGITTARIUS A* -- James Ph. Kotsybar Mysteriously cloaked, obscure despite Interior illuminating glare, Long ...
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cad: The presentation can be found in several formats at http://pirsa.org/08110051/...
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Leo: Ok I have a question: if a black hole is supermassive, say 100 billion solar mass, let's suppose Alice fells int...
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superkuh: I am glad you are back! No more disapointing weekly refreshings of that monkey....
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Ariel Amir: Very interesting, thanks. It indeed seems to be very close to what we discuss here. I wonder whether the distributi...
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