Is Fukushima now more serious than the 1979 Three Mile Island incident in the U.S.A., as US Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently claimed?     Hard to say yet.  But a…

ASAN and the IACC On Monday, I went through an ASAN petition to the CDC that appears to have been intentionally hyperbolic and meant to get supporters foaming at the mouth. Since I posted…

For days now, scientists and science blogs tell us not to worry about Japan’s nuclear reactors. Nothing can happen; no radiation will be released, all is fine. We are treated to false experts even,…

Last year, the NPR sound engineer said I was the first scientist to really nail what sonification is.  In my 365DOA podcast, I am joined by Matt and Hai-Ting of ScopesMonkeyChoir.com in the…

A 9.0 magnitude earthquake is equal to about 450 megatons of TNT being set off underground.  Due to the situation at the Daiichi nuclear plant near in Sendai Japan there is much talk of how…

This is a very short note, just to help me get a feel for how this editor works. What's so spooky about action at a distance? Entanglement of separated electrons seems no more odd to me than a…

What is a BLEVE? A BLEVE is a Boiling-Liquid Expanding-Vapor Explosion. It is fairly common knowledge that removing the radiator cap of a vehicle with a hot engine will cause the ejection of boiling…

What do the Ansei-Nankai and Ansei-Tokai earthquakes of 1854 have in common with the 1944-1946 Tononkai and Nankai earthquakes in Japan?   They each suffered massive aftershocks shortly…

Gia Milinovich is a science writer who has access to a pretty good physics resource - her husband, Science 2.0 fave Dr. Brian Cox.  But even Cox, who can make sense of why E=MC^2, can't help…

Gia Milinovich is a science writer who has access to a pretty good physics resource - her husband, Science 2.0 fave Dr. Brian Cox.  But even Cox, who can make sense of why E=MC^2, can't help…

In a 24-hour news cycle, it's hard to know what is real and what is not.  In a situation like Japan, all there is left for outsiders is concern.   And some groups with an anti-science…

In a 24-hour news cycle, it's hard to know what is real and what is not.  In a situation like Japan, all there is left for outsiders is concern.   And some groups with an anti-science…

Floods in a country,or several countries, rapid Tsunamis around the world (taking place at a faster rate), temperatures rising - do they not provide enough proof that climate change is taking…

The NEUTEL 2011 conference started today in Venice. Many experiments in neutrino physics will be reporting new results there, and the interest is of course high in the community. Along with a few…

Japan's Nuclear Emergency - The Straight Goods - Update The latest reports coming from Japan indicate that the current nuclear emergency is not as great as some people had feared it might be. Despite…

Researchers say they have ruled  the cosmic bubble theory, an alternate theory on the nature of dark energy, after recalculating the expansion rate of the universe to unprecedented accuracy. The…

Polar bears’ noses are phenomenal. They smell a seal’s fart through a light year of snow and ice or something like that. Polar bears are cute, strong, beautiful, pure awesomeness all the way. Come on…

Third graders enjoy clay and pipe cleaners. It might sound cruel to teach them graduate level graph theory most math Ph.D.’s have not seen, but I might get away with it if I uses the right craft…

... Not really. What startled me most was that a colleague of mine at the University of Padova even sent a message to my departments' mailing list, saying that the new result is very important. But…

Tsunamis are big news for the last few days and there may be an ancient reason along with a current one.  A group of researchers are saying a tsunami likely destroyed the fabled lost city of…