Turning and turning in the widening gyre     The falcon cannot hear the falconer;     Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;     Mere anarchy is loosed upon the…

The Mystery of Entropy (1)     What is entropy and what does entropy have to do with order and disorder? We know what order is. The concepts of order and disorder have been part of our…

In case you haven't noticed, there is a new paper in the arxiv which you should not ignore if you are doing Higgs physics at the LHC. Of course, most of you are not involved in this, but still, it…

Randomized, controlled trials have shown the effectiveness of implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) for preventing sudden cardiac death in patients with advanced systolic heart failure but a…

When I were a lad (ay!) my father suggested that map projections was something I ought to interest myself in.  So I got hold of paper, ruler and pencil, drew a square grid, and then started…

In 2 weeks I test for my HAM Technician-class amateur radio license. I confess no particular interest in HAM radio. However, my satellite has a transmitter and needs a call sign. It isn't smart…

While hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on masking and treating male pattern baldness, surprisingly little is known about its cause at the cellular level. A Journal of Clinical Investigation…

In an ideal energy future, man-made solar cells would mimic much of the functionality of efficient plant life.   Currently solar cell technology is expensive and a maintenance headache but…

Is the lack of complex anatomical features in fossils of primitive vertebrates absence of evidence or evidence of absence? And how would we tell? Hoping to answer this, a team of palaeontologists at…

“Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy…

Everybody knows that the orbital momentum  is "quantized" and its z-projection  has integer eigenvalues in units of  . Too few, however, know that it is, in fact, a quasi-particle…

Kathryn Gray, a 10-year-old girl in Canada, has become the youngest person ever to discover a supernova.  With a middle name like Aurora, perhaps that isn't a surprise. The supernova occurred in…

Kathryn Gray, a 10-year-old girl in Canada, has become the youngest person ever to discover a supernova.  With a middle name like Aurora, perhaps that isn't a surprise. The supernova occurred in…

A cave in the Annamite Mountains of Viet Nam contains a river and jungle and is large enough, in spots, to hold a skyscraper. Hang Son Doong Cave is part of a network of about 150 caves in…

A cave in the Annamite Mountains of Viet Nam contains a river and jungle and is large enough, in spots, to hold a skyscraper. Hang Son Doong Cave is part of a network of about 150 caves in…

One of the more commonly known facts about squid is that they squirt ink. When I ask kids, "Why do you think they do that?" the answer is usually "to escape predators" or something similar. This…

2011 is the 100th anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity and I am thinking a blog of the puzzle would be a timely topic. When I was 17 I prayed to God for a challenge worthy of the skills…

If you're a conspiracy theorist, these are good times.   Leading up to the end of 2012, when the mother of all world endings is scheduled (until the next one), plenty of things would be expected…

If you're a conspiracy theorist, these are good times.   Leading up to the end of 2012, when the mother of all world endings is scheduled (until the next one), plenty of things would be expected…

Happy New Year, and welcome to the first "Where on Google Earth" (WoGE) of 2011.  I was shocked to find out that my guess at WoGE #245 was correct, (Plymouth, Montserrat being the most post-…