New Planet Discovered 400 Light Years Away From Public's Interest

The Kepler team has just announced their first results on the discovery and confirmation of five new exoplanets. The news barely made a splash so it reminded me of an old Onion article, New Planet Discovered 400 Light Years Away From Public's Interest. I can't help but think that this is all too true. Now to be fair none of the new exoplanets are particularly interesting as they aren't in the habitable zone and have very short periods. However, this news from Kepler is proof that the satellite is working as planned so in the future we can expect some much more exciting finds.

Punctuation, Grammar, Style

I place content over punctuation, grammar, or style. I say who cares if their not using they're grammar correctly if your not using you're grammar correctly? Well, today I am grading students midterms and I find it amazing how some insist on using MLA style to hide answers. Why can't they just write the number down? Perhaps, because the MLA has strict rules for these cases:

• If your topic makes little use of numbers, "you may spell out numbers written one or two words" (Gibaldi 98). Otherwise, use arabic numerals. 

• If your writing contains the recurrent use of numeric statistical or scientific data, use numerals for those numbers but write out other numbers in the text if you can do so in one or two words. 

• Do not mix numbers that are spelled out with symbols, write out the term for the symbols as well. For example, write: 45%, or forty-five percent; $20 or twenty dollars.

There are times and places where formal punctuation, grammar, or style are not called for and I think those times include numerical responses and singing.

Wanted

Copenhagen 1941

Copenhagen 1941 ruined everything. It was like the collapse of the wave function. The friendship between Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg would never be the same. Their bond began many years previously when the young Heisenberg challenged Bohr during a meeting and Bohr, although taken aback, realized Heisenberg was a promising young mind. They grew together through research and became like family, but in September 1941 Bohr met with Heisenberg in Copenhagen and their bond was broken. There is no complete record of what was said during the meetings, but Bohr was shaken. The history of the Bohr-Heisenberg meeting is now that of legends. Roughly we can see this story as a personal example of the moral implications of science. There was an entire generation of physicists who grew up believing that science would only do good things for the world, but during the war science represented the destruction of people and there was the realization: scientists do not work in a vacuum. I cannot describe the history in its full glory and detail so I defer to this documentary which is worth a watch.

History has a way of gilding itself and so the romanticized Copenhagen meeting has gone on to inspire the play Copenhagen and it continues to resonate with the geek pop culture. My friend has made these awesome shirts. Can you spot the error on them?

Marx is claiming it was offside

Hegel is arguing that the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics, Kant via the categorical imperative is holding that ontologically it exists only in the imagination, and Marx is claiming it was offside.

McSweeney's Lists

WAYS IN WHICH SHE COULD HAVE BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE.

BY JULES LIPOFF

She exposed me to excessive ultraviolet radiation, which gave me terrible cataracts.

She removed all traces of vitamin A from my diet.

She launched well-targeted projectiles at my eyes, causing severe trauma.

She poisoned me repeatedly with steroids, which over time caused the formation of a pituitary tumor that pressed against my optic chiasm severing my optic-nerve pathways.

She replaced my contact-lens solution with corrosive acid.

She unleashed upon me lab rats trained to preferentially eat eyes.

She, my ophthalmologist, botched my Lasik surgery.

She exacerbated my diabetes by replacing my insulin with Frappuccino, which led to retinal problems.

She put me under general anesthesia and surgically removed my eyes.

She altered my parents' germ-cell chromosomes before my conception so that I lack the proper genetic code to distinguish the colors red and green.

She calibrated a refraction experiment with her laser pointer that scorched my retinas.

Other great lists from McSweeney's to enjoy:

CREATIONIST
ASTRONOMERS POLLED
REGARDING PLUTO'S
STATUS.

ACTUAL EMAIL USERNAMES
GIVEN BY STUDENTS IN
INTRODUCTORY ASTRONOMY
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA.

THE DEPLOYMENT
OF CONCEPTS FROM
THEORETICAL PHYSICS.

Astronomy is Dangerous

Photo by Abulic Monkey on Flikr.

Astronomy is a rather sheltered and tranquil endeavor, unless your telescope spontaneously snaps itself in half and crushes you. I thought the warning sign above was hilarious, but it got me thinking. Astronomy is dangerous. No, seriously astronomy is dangerous. The historical precedents tell a clear story. Long ago emperors and kings would stake their claims on the constancy of the heavens. The rulers employed astronomers (or astrologers, in the past these two professions were not distinguishable, but today their differences could not be more evident. Astronomers are like astrologers they way car is to carpet) to predict such things as the traverse of the Sun each day, the waxing and waning of the Moon, the procession of the constellations with the seasons, eclipses, comets, and supernovae. Astronomers had a good thing going working for kings. Alas, all good things must come to an end. Eclipses, comets, and supernovae sapped the precision prediction power of would be astronomers and the cosmic forecasters paid the price in their blood. In the case of supernovae the astronomers didn't stand a chance. Take for example supernova 1054. Chinese, north American, Persian and Arabic astronomers all observed and recorded it as being bright enough to see in daylight for 23 days and visible 653 nights! All of Europe failed to notice the brightest star in the sky? Perhaps the church saw to it that everyone who saw the star would also see their heads removed from their bodies.
Astronomers are clever in the face of danger and have always gotten the last laugh. Take one last historical anecdote. Galileo was persecuted by the Catholic church for his scientific views, but through cosmic karma Galileo's middle finger (I have seen it with my own eyes at the Museum of History of Science in Florence) has been stickin it to the Vatican for the last three hundred years.