Science meets Society interviews Sascha Vongehr

Science meets Society interviews Sascha Vongehr

Science meets society (SMS) has interviewed me. Actually, they took my answers to their list of questions so to make it look like an interview may have taken place. I am thankful for the honor and…
Blowing Hot Air: The Methane Hydrate Delusion

Blowing Hot Air: The Methane Hydrate Delusion

Last week, word came from Prudhoe Bay that sent chills through me as surely as if I’d been standing in the Alaskan North Slope drilling outpost myself. The United States Department of Energy – in…
Tycho Supernova Remnant 55 Light Years Wide

Tycho Supernova Remnant 55 Light Years Wide

Type Ia supernovae are important for measuring the universe because they're bright enough to be seen across large distances and similar enough to be a reference, an an object of known luminosity -…
Marcellus Shale Fracking Wastewater Harmful

Marcellus Shale Fracking Wastewater Harmful

A new paper by Natural Resources Defense Council says hydraulic fracturing (fracking) generates massive amounts of polluted wastewater in in the Marcellus Shale that threatens the health of…
Physics is hard.  No Duh?

Physics is hard. No Duh?

It seems that one Toby Cubitt,  a quantum physicist, has done research which proves mathematically that physics is hard.  Well no duh.  Physics is the subject sane people avoid in…
Traumatic Insemination - How Bugs Get Over It

Traumatic Insemination - How Bugs Get Over It

If bugs have their own Tori Amos, she is likely writing about sexual conflict and how reproduction exists at all given that it can be so costly, especially to females. One aspect of this conflict…
How Handedness Happens

How Handedness Happens

Many proteins and other functional molecules in our bodies display a striking characteristic: They can exist in two distinct forms that are mirror images of each other, chirality or "handedness…
What Poor Africans Need: Anti-Malaria Fashion

What Poor Africans Need: Anti-Malaria Fashion

Poor people in developing nations have been caught in a cultural tug-of-war over how to best keep them from dying of Malaria.  What they need to break the impasse between anti-science acolytes…
Sports Leads To Advanced Civilization

Sports Leads To Advanced Civilization

The so-called 'reality-based community' hates popular culture, unless they like it ironically. Sports most of all. But, argues George Washington University Professor of Anthropology Jeffrey P.…
Are Jews A 'Race'? Can DNA Explain High Jewish IQ?

Are Jews A 'Race'? Can DNA Explain High Jewish IQ?

Are modern Jews a ‘race’—the descendants of an ancient tribal people, as Biblical lore has it? Or do they trace their ancestry to Eurasia as Shlomo Sand, author of The Invention of the Jewish People…
Orbital Debris And Space Weather?

Orbital Debris And Space Weather?

I've some background in space weather-- the influence of solar activity on Earth and near-Earth orbits.  My new job as a professor at Capitol College has brought me into contact with several…
Hawaiian Island Beaches Eroding

Hawaiian Island Beaches Eroding

Over the past century, 70 percent of beaches on the islands of Kaua'i, O'ahu, and Maui have had long-term erosion, according to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and University of Hawai'i (UH) report…
GR versus QFT, Discuss

GR versus QFT, Discuss

Since 1930, efforts have been made to get our best theory for gravity - general relativity (GR) - to work with our best theory for atoms - quantum field theory (QFT) in the forms quantum…