I am spending a week in Israel to visit three physics institutes for colloquia and seminars: the Tel Aviv University (where I gave a colloquium yesterday), the Haifa Technion (where I am giving a…

The STENDEC Puzzle Ever since BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust vanished on a flight from Buenos Aires to Santiago, the ending of its final transmission - STENDEC - has continued to puzzle experts and…

In Scotland, traditional New Year greeting is Lang may yer lum reek meaning “long may your chimney smoke”.  So may you never be short of fuel for your fire. So, if I understand this article…

One-third of science is not published in the common language of science, English, and that prevents uptake of the results and citations for the researchers, according to a new analysis. Language…

Today I am actually quite proud of my research institute, the "Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, INFN, which leads Italian research in fundamental physics. In fact a selection to hire 73 new…

If Humans Touch Mars Will It Be Another Tale Of Human Missteps Like Lascaux? Copyright © Robert Walker (UK). All rights reserved. Cover picture shows First published on December 2016. You can…

Vera Rubin who helped to discover one of the greatest mysteries of nature has died.    She was the mother of astronomical dark matter investigation.  I won't write about her…

During the past few months I have been giving seminars and colloquia in several institutes around Europe and the US. The topic was more or less always the same, i.e. the discovery criterion used in…

Unlike Alex Durig, who has given us 5 Predictions for 2017, I will not attempt to make any.  Rather I will try to enjoy what remains of the 12 days of Christmas (the last one being the 5th of…

Everyone has heard of the hangover, it is that sluggish feeling after drinking too much alcohol- A group of psychologists now contend that emotional experiences can induce physiological and internal…

If you are sick and need to be readmitted to the hospital after already spending time there, your chances of being allowed back in have dropped since the weight of federal law has imposed penalties…

#1. The Democrat Party Will Become the Party of Angry Black People When Obama came along, he brought with him a new ideology: the Democrat Party would now be the party of Black people who are unhappy…

Today while I was having a shower I happened to think at how cool it is that we can actually measure the rate of production, in single hadron-hadron collisions, of multiple elementary particles. A…

Just put them in the mail on December 24... It was a fun year of thinking, whether the idea is right or wrong. Since the core idea fits on a Christmas card, it is worth continuing to think about in…

In any physicists' new-year wish list there is a mandatory item: the finding of some unexpected, bolt-from-the-blue new physics result - possibly leading to highly-cited publications, press…

Many people have predicted the end of fundamental physics.  Often these are at the end of great progress such as the late 19th century when classical physics was quite well understood, or in the…

If I wanted to create a fake news story – I would lead with a sensational headline. Something that would incense and shock the readers and be extra “clickbaity”. Perhaps a hook about a teenager…

Ineffective drugs are generally a bad idea - natural medicine, osteopathy and homeopathy are not considered medicine because they can't demonstrate efficacy, and chemotherapy drugs are expensive so…

Modern diet fads, like paleo, farm-to-fork, the weird Food Babe's if-she-can't-spell-it-you-shouldn't-eat-it beliefs, harken back to a simpler time when people lived off the land, and nothing had…

Carbon Cycles by Arvid G. Högbom For centuries it was commonly believed that the Earth's climate is, and always has been, stable.  The idea that the climate, on the contrary, has always changed…