December 2004
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Numbing numbers
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As the horrid death toll from the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami continues to rise, we are confronted with a barrage of numbers: many tens or even a hundred thousand dead, nine on the Richter scale, ten-meter waves. Do we really know what these figures mean? Part of the problem is simply definitions: who knows…
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Winter break
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See you in a week or so. Courtesy The New York Times (2004).
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Pogue Mahone
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Thanks to the help of the aforementioned ringer, we went to see the Pogues play in Birmingham last weekend. For the most part, they’ve worn their age well; lead singer Shane MacGowan may be the exception, beginning to look more like Johnny Vegas, but sounding even more like the drunks and hustlers in his songs.…
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The Multiverse
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As an irrelevant aside, contrary to the the narrator’s claim in What We Still Don’t Know, Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees certainly did not coin the term “multiverse” (the idea that what we call the whole Universe is just one among many, perhaps each with its own properties); it was used in superhero comics in…
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What we still don’t know
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Channel 4 in the UK just finished showing What We Still Don’t Know, a new science show presented by Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal. The aim was admirable, discussing science’s open questions, rather than presenting the usual heroic fait accompli of pop-science. Somehow, the series got hijacked over the course of the episodes, becoming…
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Waverley Sunset
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Astronomers on the internet
I’m up in beautiful Edinburgh (perhaps my favorite city in the UK, even at this very dark time of year) fulfilling my duties as the chair of the Astrogrid Science Advisory group, at their latest project meeting. Astrogrid is part of the world wide effort to create a virtual observatory, a way for astronomers to…
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Existential Detectives and Bad Religion
“I ♥ Huckabees,” the new movie from David O. Russell, features Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman as “Jaffe & Jaffe, Existential Investigators.” (I’m always pleased to see my family name in lights.) Not a deeply philosophical movie, but entertaining and intelligent enough. Smarter than, say, this commentary from last weekend’s Guardian by Mike Purton, “Physics…
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Viva Hubble?
According to National Public Radio: Report Discourages NASA Plan to Save Hubble A confidential report commissioned by NASA has concluded that the space agency’s plan to use a robot to save the Hubble telescope is highly risky. The robot would install two new instruments and replace batteries and gyroscopes. But the report suggests NASA should…
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Big Eyed Beans from Venus
(First in a short series on Astro department Christmas parties) Just back from the Oxford Astronomy Department (where I proudly count myself as a visitor) Christmas/Holiday party. Aside from a fairly staggering amount of booze, featured entertainment was “Big-Eyed Beans From Venus”, a bluesy five-piece featuring students and postdocs from the astro group (and one…
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