(Wired Autopia) – Chris Goodfellow:
There has been a lot of speculation about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Terrorism, hijacking, meteors. I cannot believe the analysis on CNN; it’s almost disturbing. I tend to look for a simpler explanation, and I find it with the 13,000-foot runway at Pulau Langkawi. …
(The Far Left Side) – Mike Stanfill:
So I’m listening to The Takeway on NPR and they were discussing the new breakthrough on cosmic inflation and gravitational waves and the part they played in the formation of our universe. A physicist invited on the show gamely attempted to dumb the concept down to an acceptable American level but it was still absolutely mind-blowing. Then the host threw the conversation over to the listening audience and it all went downhill. Fast. …
(SPIEGEL Netzwelt) – Sascha Lobo:
Die Snowden-Leaks markieren den Beginn einer neuen politischen Ära: des Zeitalters der Leakpolitik. Ob der türkische Premier Erdogan, US-Diplomaten oder Nicolas Sarkozy – jeder muss inzwischen damit rechnen, dass privat geglaubte Informationen ungefiltert öffentlich gemacht werden. …
(The Daily Beast::Tech&Health) – If you won’t trust your doctors on vaccinating your kids, will you ever really trust them at all? …
thedailybeast…2014/01/30/the-real-reason
(xkcd) – Randall Munroe:
“Just think – the light from that star was emitted thousands of years ago. It could be long gone.” …
(Phenomena::Only Human) – Virginia Hughes:
Several popular books that provided instructions for recovering repressed memories “urged therapists to ask their clients about childhood incest,” notes William Saletan in his excellent 2010 Slate series on memory. And they had a huge impact. “Women were suing their parents for millions of dollars. Hundreds of accused families sought help.”
As these accusations mounted, several high-profile psychology researchers began speaking out against the idea of repressed memories. In a 1993 article in American Psychologist, memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus pointed out that little if any scientific evidence supported the idea of repressed memories: Nobody knew how commonly traumatized people repress memories, or how accurate the memories are, or how juries are likely to react to them. …
(Preposterous Universe) – Sean Carroll:
Each year, the 14th of March is celebrated by scientifically-minded folks for two good reasons. First, it’s Einstein’s birthday (happy 135th, Albert!). Second, it’s Pi Day, because 3/14 is the closest calendrical approximation we have to the decimal expansion of pi, π =3.1415926535897932….
Both of these features — Einstein and pi — are loosely related by playing important roles in science and mathematics. But is there any closer connection? …
preposterousuniverse…2014/03/13/einstein-and-pi
(Planetary Blogs) – Mars Express Team:
In movies about the impending end of the world due to a comet impact, one thing is certain: Detecting the comet and computing its orbit are dead easy. The scene starts with a computer screen showing a telescope image of a star field, where we can make out a faint, fuzzy little object that doesn’t quite look as if it belonged there.
A scientist will throw a brief, disinterested glance at the screen and turn away. Then he stops. His eyes go wide and he snaps around to stare at the screen. He’ll call in his colleagues. Computer programs are started, and people frantically hack away at keyboards. In no time at all, they will have identified the fuzzy blob as a comet that is hurtling in from the frozen recesses of space.
What’s more, in no time at all, they will have determined the comet’s trajectory and they can categorically state that it will hit Earth. A few more frantic calculations and they also know the date and time of impact – Quick, call Bruce Willis!
Neat. But does it really work like that? …
(Non Sequitur) – Wiley Miller:
“It’s March now, and March means spring, so why do we still have snow out there?!” …
(HuffPost Blog) – Christophe Deloire:
Reporters Without Borders has been investigating countries that operate some of the most restrictive and oppressive areas of cyberspace, in its new report, ‘Enemies of the Internet.’ …
(The Guardian Comments) – Suzanne Moore:
The right’s efforts to claim Bob Crow as one of their own only highlight the great chasm between us and them. …
theguardian…2014/mar/12/bob-crow
(The Intercept) – Ryan Gallagher and Glenn Greenwald:
Documents analyzed by The Intercept show how the NSA has aggressively accelerated its hacking initiatives in the past decade by computerizing some processes previously handled by humans. The automated system – codenamed TURBINE – is designed to “allow the current implant network to scale to large size (millions of implants) by creating a system that does automated control implants by groups instead of individually.”
Mikko Hypponen, an expert in malware calls the revelations “disturbing.” The NSA’s surveillance techniques, he warns, could inadvertently be undermining the security of the Internet. …
theintercept…2014/03/12/nsa-plans
(Phenomena::No Place Like Home) – Nadia Drake:
Named after a character in L. Frank Baum’s Oz series, Project Ozma was the first scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligent life. From April to July, 1960, astronomers in Green Bank, West Virginia monitored two nearby, sun-like stars for artificial radio signals – signs that an interstellar intelligence inhabited Earth’s starry skies, that humans were not adrift in an incessantly quiet cosmic ocean.
The entire endeavor cost $2,000. …
(Discover Blogs::Out there) – Corey S. Powell:
Giordano Bruno is well known as a martyr to the cause of modern astronomy.
But Bruno was not much of a Copernican, or by most accounts much of an astronomer at all. His interests were theological, not physical, and his astronomical writings are considered amateurish and confused.
While Bruno was making grand pronouncements and racking up enemies, Thomas Digges was quietly doing much more to bring the ideas of Copernicus into the mainstream of European thinking. Digges was one of the leading astronomers in 16th century England – a place where Catholic doctrine obviously did not hold the kind of sway that it did in Italy. In 1576, Digges published the first English translation of Copernicus’s revolutionary (literally) text, De revolutionibus.
Digges’s goal, in the words of science historian Francis Johnson, was to make the ideas of Copernicus and the sun-centered universe available “to the skilled artisans and mechanics whose intelligent co-operation was so necessary to successful research in the sciences.” Digges was not just an astronomer, he was also a popularizer of science. You might call him the Carl Sagan of his day. …
(APoD) – About 50 million light-years distant in the northern constellation Pegasus, NGC 7331 is one of the brighter galaxies not included in Charles Messier‘s famous 18th century catalog. …
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