According to Feynman, the 2-slit experiment with electrons "has in it the heart of quantum mechanics" and "is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way". To begin with, it may not be amiss to inform the never-ending discussion of this experiment with a knowledge of the rules that go into calculating the predicted and observed interference pattern.

The mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics can be built up on the basis of the following rules. Suppose that you want to calculate the probability of a particular outcome of a measurement M₂, given the outcome of am earlier measurement M₁. Here is what you have to do:

A new study shows that the rate of sea-level rise along the U.S. Atlantic coast is greater now than at any time in the past 2,000 years - and a consistent link between changes in global mean surface temperature and sea level.

History, Science and the TMT Boundary


To the extent that written records show political, religious or other personal bias, it may be truly said that history is bunk.  Or we may say with Henry Ford that history - as a list of dates of political events - is bunk.  But if we take the term 'history' as inclusive of everything known about the past that has a bearing on our current collective human knowledge, then history is a most valuable asset.

A group of biologists have discovered seven previously unknown species of mammals on Luzon Island in the Philippines. 

All of the species are forest mice, and each species lives only in a small part of Luzon.   Two of the new species live only in the Zambales Mountains (on Mt. Tapulao), two live only on Mt. Banahaw (south of Manila), two only in the Mingan Mountains of Aurora Province, and one lives only in the Sierra Madre of northeastern Luzon.

Scientists at Karolinska Institutet and Helsinki University are reporting that DCDC2, a gene linked to dyslexia, has a surprising biological function: it controls cilia, the antenna-like projections that cells use to communicate. 

Sexting, where people send photographs and sexually explicit text messages to titillate them  and perhaps increase the likelihood of a sexual relationship,  is a fairly new phenomenon.

The Internet has made the act of infidelity much easier and though sex and infidelity are now only a keyboard away, the goal for many seems to remain physical, face-to-face contact, at least in sexual relationships.   Obviously plenty of people lie or try to initiate cyber-relationships with no interest in actual human contact.

You've heard or read the scenarios - rapidly escalating levels of CO2 could cause rapidly escalating temperatures, even as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit.    The problem is that they are just scenarios based on a growing, yet incomplete, understanding of how climate works.

During some periods in the past, there has been 10 times the CO2 present today with little change in temperature.  At other times, temperatures have spiked rapidly but it had little to do with CO2.

Climate change is very complex, and, consequentially, models predicting it need to take into account many different aspects, from wind patterns to plant and algal growth. One of the expected consequences of the changing climate is that some regions will be drier, while others will be subjected to higher rates of precipitation, which, up in the north, means more snow.

If you're anything more than an infrequent stumbler to Science 2.0, then you will probably have noticed - if not, read - Helen's article on geomagnetic polarity reversals, which until recently has been floating in the top articles list.

Whilst it's a gallant attempt to understand the ins and outs of an incredibly complex and poorly understood process, there are a number of misconceptions that I thought would be a good idea to clear up. It's clearly a topic of great interest, because there are over 400 comments on the article.

Before going into these misconceptions, though, let's start with...