Vice President of Newfangled.com, Writer for PRINT and F+W Media, blogger, infrequent designer, reader, science fiction enthusiast...

March 16th 2011

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Freeman Dyson, How We Know

Posted at 3:24pm and tagged with: quote, science,.

“
The public has a distorted view of science, because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries. Wherever we go exploring in the world around us, we find mysteries. Our planet is covered by continents and oceans whose origin we cannot explain. Our atmosphere is constantly stirred by poorly understood disturbances that we call weather and climate. The visible matter in the universe is outweighed by a much larger quantity of dark invisible matter that we do not understand at all. The origin of life is a total mystery, and so is the existence of human consciousness. We have no clear idea how the electrical discharges occurring in nerve cells in our brains are connected with our feelings and desires and actions…Science is the sum total of a great multitude of mysteries. It is an unending argument between a great multitude of voices. It resembles Wikipedia much more than it resembles the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
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July 29th 2010

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Brainstem and spinal cord discovered in Michelangelo 

Michelangelo, the 16th century master painter and accomplished anatomist, appears to have hidden an image of the brainstem and spinal cord in a depiction of God in the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers reports. These findings by a neurosurgeon and a medical illustrator, published in the May Neurosurgery, may explain long controversial and unusual features of one of the frescoes’ figures. 

Posted at 12:21pm and tagged with: art, science,.

Brainstem and spinal cord discovered in Michelangelo  Michelangelo, the 16th century master painter and accomplished anatomist, appears to have hidden an image of the brainstem and spinal cord in a depiction of God in the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers reports. These findings by a neurosurgeon and a medical illustrator, published in the May Neurosurgery, may explain long controversial and unusual features of one of the frescoes’ figures. 

July 27th 2010

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“Galileo was the first to notice that objects are pulled towards the center of the Earth, but Newton showed that this same force (gravity) was responsible for the orbits of the planets in the Solar System.”

Posted at 4:18pm and tagged with: gravity, science,.

“Galileo was the first to notice that objects are pulled towards the center of the Earth, but Newton showed that this same force (gravity) was responsible for the orbits of the planets in the Solar System.”

July 27th 2010

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“Math is no match for locust swarms.”

Posted at 12:06pm and tagged with: science, nature,.

“Math is no match for locust swarms.”

July 26th 2010

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“It is entirely possible that beneath the quantum domain is a world of pure chaos, without any fixed laws or symmetries.”

Posted at 3:28pm and tagged with: time, cosmology, science,.

“It is entirely possible that beneath the quantum domain is a world of pure chaos, without any fixed laws or symmetries.”

May 27th 2010

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I took these pictures at the Mathematica exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science.

Posted at 4:25pm and tagged with: mathematics, eames, museum, science,.

April 20th 2010

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One of last week’s episodes of To the Best of Our Knowledge had a segment on the Garden of Cosmic Speculation (shown above) — a private garden created by architect Charles Jencks and his wife to explore scientific concepts with landscape. Very cool!

Posted at 9:38am and tagged with: science, plants, gardening, music,.

One of last week’s episodes of To the Best of Our Knowledge had a segment on the Garden of Cosmic Speculation (shown above) — a private garden created by architect Charles Jencks and his wife to explore scientific concepts with landscape. Very cool!

March 23rd 2010

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From the Neurophilosophy blog:

HIS is the left cerebral hemisphere of an 18-month-old infant who lived some 800 years ago. Such finds are extremely rare, because nervous tissue is soft and normally begins to decompose soon after death, so this specimen is unique in that it has been far better preserved than any other. Although reduced by about 80% of its original weight, many of its anatomical features have remained intact. The frontal, temporal and occipital lobes have retained their original shape; the gyri and sulci (the grooves and furrows on the surface, respectively labelled G and S, above) are easily recognizable; and deep within the temporal are the identifiable the remnants of cells. 

Posted at 9:02am and tagged with: archaeology, science, brain,.

From the Neurophilosophy blog: HIS is the left cerebral hemisphere of an 18-month-old infant who lived some 800 years ago. Such finds are extremely rare, because nervous tissue is soft and normally begins to decompose soon after death, so this specimen is unique in that it has been far better preserved than any other. Although reduced by about 80% of its original weight, many of its anatomical features have remained intact. The frontal, temporal and occipital lobes have retained their original shape; the gyri and sulci (the grooves and furrows on the surface, respectively labelled G and S, above) are easily recognizable; and deep within the temporal are the identifiable the remnants of cells. 

March 10th 2010

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Voyager Golden Record - awesome.

Posted at 9:03am and tagged with: science, space,.

Voyager Golden Record - awesome.

March 9th 2010

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The original manuscript of Albert Einstein’s groundbreaking theory of relativity, which helps explain everything from black holes to the Big Bang, went on display Sunday in its entirety for the first time. Einstein’s 46-page handwritten explanation of his general theory of relativity, in which he demonstrates an expanding universe and shows how gravity can bend space and time, is being shown at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Jerusalem as part the scholarly association’s 50th anniversary celebration. First published in 1916, the general theory of relativity remains a pivotal breakthrough in modern physics.

Posted at 1:04pm and tagged with: science, history,.

The original manuscript of Albert Einstein’s groundbreaking theory of relativity, which helps explain everything from black holes to the Big Bang, went on display Sunday in its entirety for the first time. Einstein’s 46-page handwritten explanation of his general theory of relativity, in which he demonstrates an expanding universe and shows how gravity can bend space and time, is being shown at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Jerusalem as part the scholarly association’s 50th anniversary celebration. First published in 1916, the general theory of relativity remains a pivotal breakthrough in modern physics.

February 26th 2010

Is it time to take a more active approach and systematically advertise our existence to the cosmos? Some searchers for extraterrestrial intelligence say yes. Others suggest it’s a rash, naïve idea.

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Posted at 1:34pm and tagged with: science, aliens,.

February 17th 2010

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Ewa Hess on neurocapitalism

Posted at 2:53pm and tagged with: science, economics,.

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Today, the phenomenology of the mind is stepping indignantly aside for a host of hyphenated disciplines such as neuro-anthropology, neuro-pedagogy, neuro-theology, neuro-aesthetics and neuro-economics. Their self-assurance reveals the neurosciences’ usurpatory tendency to become not only the humanities of science, but the leading science of the twenty-first century. The legitimacy, impetus and promise of this claim derive from the maxim that all human behaviour is determined by the laws governing neuronal activity and the way it is organised in the brain.

Whether or not one accepts the universal validity of this maxim, it is fair to assume that a science that aggressively seeks to establish hermeneutic supremacy will change everyday capitalist reality via its discoveries and products. Or, to put it more cautiously, that its triumph is legitimated, if not enabled, by a significant shift in the capitalist world order.
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February 10th 2010

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WIRED:

Scientists have unearthed an almost perfectly preserved spider fossil in China dating back to the middle Jurassic era, 165 million years ago. The fossilized spiders, Eoplectreurys gertschi, are older than the only two other specimens known by around 120 million years.

Posted at 1:59pm and tagged with: history, science,.

WIRED: Scientists have unearthed an almost perfectly preserved spider fossil in China dating back to the middle Jurassic era, 165 million years ago. The fossilized spiders, Eoplectreurys gertschi, are older than the only two other specimens known by around 120 million years.

February 7th 2010

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A complex symmetric structure known as theexceptional Lie group E8, which has so far only existed in the minds of mathematicians, seems to have turned up in real life for the first time.

Posted at 11:01am and tagged with: science, math,.

A complex symmetric structure known as theexceptional Lie group E8, which has so far only existed in the minds of mathematicians, seems to have turned up in real life for the first time.

February 7th 2010

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Scientists have built a clock which is 100,000 times more precise than the existing international standard.

Posted at 9:01am and tagged with: science, time,.

Scientists have built a clock which is 100,000 times more precise than the existing international standard.