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Gruber Prize 2007
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This year’s Gruber Prize in Cosmology has been awarded to the two teams that used distant supernovae — exploding stars that are nearly “standard candles” — to be the first to conclusively determine that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, likely due to something very much like Einstein’s “Cosmological Constant”. (Or, at least, among…
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Andrew’s post-gig guide
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When I’m not hanging out with astronomers or rock stars who want to be astronomers, I’ve been out to see rock stars (or at least rock ‘n’ roll journeymen and women) in their usual habitats. The Mekons have long been a favorite (obsession?) of mine: formed in Leeds during the UK punk explosion, they celebrated…
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MRR
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Congratulations to Professor Michael Rowan-Robinson, former head of our Astrophysics Group at Imperial and president of the Royal Astronomical Society. This week, Imperial hosted a meeting in Michael’s honor on the occasion of his 65th birthday, From IRAS to Herschel/Planck: Cosmology with infrared and submillimetre surveys. Astrophysicists came from all over the UK, Europe and…
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Crowdsourcing Astronomy
One of the tenets of the so-called Web 2.0 is that it’s about an “architecture of participation”, allowing users (i.e., everyone) to contribute their knowledge and expertise — or just enthusiasm — to harness our “collective intelligence”. That’s why Wikipedia is about as good as the Britannica — and why you can look up photos…
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Scientific Illiteracy
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The Observer featured a lengthy article by Tim Adams bemoaning the generic scientific illiteracy of society today, tracing a line from CP Snow’s “Two Cultures” through Natalie Angier’s new book, The Canon:A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science. It concentrates a bit too heavily on uber-agent John Brockman’s somewhat pretentious “Third Culture, a…
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Hard Rock in the Solar System
The Zodiacal Light is a fuzzy glow visible in the morning and evening sky, stretching along the line along which the constellations of the zodiac appear — the ecliptic that we now know to be the plane made up of the sun and the orbits of the planets. Observations of the zodiacal light show it…
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The Blair Decade
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Today’s New York Times gives the best — and shortest — summary of the Blair years, which have ended today with Gordon Brown taking over (and immediately restructuring education and science, about which more once I’ve digested it), and Blair signing on to apply his talents to the Middle East. The editorial correctly digests Blair’s…
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Lights Out London
In honor of the Summer solstice (and Gaia herself) we Londoners are being encouraged to shut off our lights for an hour at 9pm tonight. Even Picadilly Circus will be dark, for the first time since World War II. Even if it’s just a PR campaign, take advantage: go outside and look at the stars.
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All the News That’s Fit to Pay, and Pay, and Pay For
I was travelling through Schiphol airport in Amsterdam today (more later on the various reasons why) when I was delighted to see the Sunday New York Times on sale at the airport news-stand… until they tried to charge me €14.50 (about $20 or £10). It’s still the best paper in the world (especially on Sunday),…
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Whole Foods
I spent over an hour this afternoon in full green consumerist frenzy, celebrating the opening (i.e., shopping at) the new London branch of the Whole Foods supermarket chain. Three floors of good food, eco-friendly (more or less; see below), tasty, not at all cheap, luckily located en route from work to home. And noticeably more…