Tag Archives: Science
Trying to make science respectable again
Forty years ago Americans were fascinated by science.
Science gave us Moon landings, microwave ovens and airbags. Science promised to end the drudgery in our lives, feed the hungry, extend our lifespans and cure our illnesses. Science was our great hope for the future.
In the last ten years or so we’ve seen our fascination with science [...]
Our world may be a giant hologram
For the past seven years, this German set-up has been looking for gravitational waves – ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes. GEO600 has not detected any gravitational waves so far, but it might inadvertently have made the most important discovery in physics for half a [...]
The world’s only immortal animal
Turritopsis nutricula is a hydrozoan, and it’s considered by scientists to be the only animal that cheated death.
Solitary organisms are (according to current belief) doomed to die, after they completed their life cycle. Hydrozoa are a huge class of predatory animals that live mostly in saltwater, closely related to jellyfish and corals. Eggs and sperm [...]
The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete
From Wired:
“All models are wrong, but some are useful.”
So proclaimed statistician George Box 30 years ago, and he was right. But what choice did we have? Only models, from cosmological equations to theories of human behavior, seemed to be able to consistently, if imperfectly, explain the world around us. Until now. Today companies like Google, [...]
Scientists find missing evolutionary link using tiny fungus crystal
Creationists like to latch on to minor points to try and make major claims. One of the more popular latch points for them is the transition from single cell, or simple, lifeforms to the more complex, multicellular forms. Since up until now science has not had a ready explanation for that jump, creationists [...]
ID, it deserves to be Expelled
Writing on the ScienceBlogs, pharyngula is someone I read daily. A while ago he posted this video, which he describes better than I ever could, and attempts to correct a few of the glaring misconceptions spouted by O’Reilly and Stein.
Two people vying to out-stupid each other
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Evolution (or as he called [...]
Tied Up in Knots
From ScienceNewsOnline:
Call it Murphy’s Law of knots: If something can get tangled up, it will. “Anything that’s long and flexible seems to somehow end up knotted,” says Andrew Belmonte, an applied mathematician at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. Belmonte has plenty of alarming anecdotal evidence. “It certainly happens in my house, with the [...]
2008 National High School Essay Contest
From Alliance for Science:
2008 National High School Essay Contest
For our second annual National High School Essay Contest we invite students to submit essays of not more than 1,000 words on one of two topics — “Climate and Evolution” or “Agriculture and Evolution.”
Submission deadline is February 29, 2008.
Student prizes start with $300 for first place, and [...]
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