Some see myths as things of the past in our enlightened age. For example, in a recent episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said (speaking of the revolutionary ideas of Thales of Miletus around 600 BCE), “The workings of nature could be explained without recourse to the supernatural.” He got […]
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Cold Comfort: Physics Cures the Common Cold
It’s still the sniffle season and there’s still no cure for the common cold. So says the Mayo Clinic; so say many others. They are wrong. Here is the long-sought cure. No kidding. It turns out to be spectacularly unspectacular. It is simple physics. (That’s too bad; if it were complex chemistry it would be […]
Just Don’t Bug Me: Infection Control in a Distant Realm
Just Don’t Bug Me: Infection Control in a Far Country Back to Priština, new capital of a new country, Kosovo. Our hadrons lost an argument about occupying space on a crosswalk. We’re taxi-struck and dazed. Ambulance doors open. Sign says Emergency. Another sign, University Clinical Center of Kosova, is the only other English sight or sound amid […]
Exotic Not-Erotic Hadrons vs Gravitational Ripples
I’m taking time out from Pristina. Exotic hadrons are the rage this week. Suddenly a cipher, Z(4430), seems to be sexy. What’s exotic? Well, not-exotic, plain-vanilla hadrons are particles of matter. They include baryons―the protons and neutrons that are stable in nuclei of atoms that we see, and unstable particles called mesons that fly unseen […]
Hitting the Streets of Priština
We are in Priština, the new capital of a new country, war-torn Kosovo. Main street is Bill Klinton―not a typo―Boulevard. His statue’s in the square. He’s their hero; he gave the Kosovans Kosovo. Cars crowd sidewalks, people throng the streets, mingling in a complex dance. The dance is guided by blue signs and fading pavement-paint […]
Day Bus in Kruševa
After some sunny days in Beograd we take a bus to Priština, a 5½-hour ride, or so we think. There are overnight buses but we decide to take the day bus. It leaves at noon. It is a clean but hand-me-down Mercedes with two drivers and is almost full. All locals, except for us. I […]
Night Train in Novi Sad
It’s a break for me from writing, or so I’m thinking. We are on the 09:48 from Wien to Beograd. Change of trains in Budapest; a 16-minute connection ― safe enough because the first leg is an Austrian train. The second leg is 7 hours. Or should be. It seems that we are stopping overlong […]
What Do Neanderthals Say About Race?
Okay, this is not about Sochi. It’s about racial distinctions, and what physics can contribute to out understanding of them. ‘Race’ once referred to a group with a common line of descent. But over time it became less clear. Nineteenth-century racial distinctions were built on emerging sciences of linguistics and physical anthropology. Many scientists were […]
Harry Potter Magic and Levitation Physics
Some weeks back Harry Potter’s magic, having helped him walk through a brick wall, got me onto bosons. A boson’s any kind of particle that has integral spin (like 0 or 1). What’s spin? Well, that’s another story. Suffice to say it is a quantum number used by physicists to tag a quantum state. Fermions […]