This week we venture into mathematical philosophy to shine a light on some long-standing mind benders that maybe we can now resolve. And they turn out to be profoundly practical. Does infinity exist or is it a figment of imagination? Are numbers a property of the universe that we discover or are they ideas we […]
There are billions of black holes in our universe. Maybe gazillions. Stephen Hawking says they give off a strange kind of radiation. So we should see them, right? Here’s a cosmological Catch-22. To set the scene, the Albert Einstein Institute says: ‘If, in our universe’s fiery youth, “mini black holes” of very little mass had […]
Iridium Skies Will Be Safer Losing an international flight over the ocean should soon become a thing of the past. This is a perk that we will get from a new satellite array and a new airspace-safety business. The new satellites will do much more than that. Raymond Hall, a former trans-Pacific pilot, says they […]
Nineteen times out of twenty. We come across these numbers almost daily in the news. But behind them there’s an old problem. In the 1800s British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli famously said that there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Or so American author Mark Twain claimed. Too bad for his story that Disraeli died […]
Good news for patients who need cancer radiotherapy about ways to devise more-effective and less-harmful cancer treatments using radiation. Also, good news for radiobiology researchers who design experiments to better understand and measure what is actually going on when radiation is used to kill cells. Both flow from a definitive book published by Canadian biophysicist […]
This week we take a look at a new telescope. It is called CHIME. Its design is unconventional, using cylinder-shaped antennae rather than dishes. There are five of them. Each has a parabolic shape to focus the signal. Construction of the 10,000 sq. m. array is now underway. First operation is set for next year. CHIME […]
The latest science news features a big black hole that is way too big. Big black holes are hot these days. There are two reasons. Big black holes are so extreme they confront us with puzzles that test the limits of our theories. And new telescopes are showing us more crazy things that big black […]
There’s a planet in the news. An international team of astronomers using NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has spotted the most Earth-like extrasolar planet ever found. Seeking Earth-like planets is what Kepler’s all about. Indeed thanks in large part to Kepler new planets are old hat these days. The first confirmed discovery was 27 years ago. Around […]
Here’s more news from big telescopes. The galaxy depicted in the illustration is called CR7. It has a football flavor: Google tells me CR7 is Cristiano Ronaldo, star player for famed Spanish soccer team, Real Madrid. The galaxy named after him shows up way down on page three of my search results! That bright patch […]