Scientists claim that helium rain is the best explanation for the scarcity of neon in the outer layers of Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet. Neon dissolves in the helium raindrops and falls towards the deeper interior where it re-dissolves, depleting the upper layers of both elements, say the authors of the new report in Physical Review Letters.

The research will help refine models of Jupiter's interior and the interiors of other planets. Modeling planetary interiors has become a hot research area since the discovery of hundreds of extrasolar planets living in extreme environments around other stars. The study will also be relevant for NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter, which is scheduled to be launched next year.

Is there some way we can teach our children that there is no such thing as a free lunch?  Perhaps then they will not grow up to think that problems can always be solved - if only we throw enough crazy unscientific ideas at them.


The laws of thermodynamics dictate a simple policy of universal application.  It is one that policy makers must be forced to understand: mother nature will not permit us to reverse a fossil fuel energy production process without using more energy than the process has itself released.


One of the most ludicrous ideas I have ever read about, purportedly coming from scientists, is that we can somehow sequester carbon.  Let me give my reasons.

I'm sure many of you have heard the old story about a group of blind men trying to describe an elephant.  One guy grabs the elephant's leg and says an elephant must be like a tree.  Another guy grabs the end of its tail and says it's like a woman's ponytail.  Another one catches a breeze from the elephant's flapping ear and says the creature is more like a large fan.  (Okay, obviously I don't remember the details of the story, but you get the picture.)  One of the places I heard this story in detail was in a course on Indian Philosophies, and it was used as a way of describing the difficulty any one person will have in understanding the whole of reality.

Rock Scissors Paper Custard



Ok, forget the scissors and paper - this article is about rocks

and custard.




The Sliding Rocks Of Racetrack Playa


Racetrack Playa is a dry lake bed in Death Valley National Park.  It is famous for its sliding rocks.  Theories that the rocks have been moved by people or animals have been ruled out.  These rocks move according to some as yet unknown natural mechanism.



Image source: Wikimedia, Tahoenathan, GNU.


The sliding rocks are few in number and are found mainly in the southeast.

A brand new result in Higgs boson physics has been presented by my old-time CDF colleague Wei-Ming Yao at the Moriond QCD conference two days ago. It is the combination of CDF and DZERO limits on the Higgs boson, and it constitutes a significant advancement in our knowledge of the standard model.

The result is simple to state in a single sentence, although it will take me several pages to explain it acceptably. The Higgs boson is excluded at 95% confidence level in the 130-210 GeV mass range, if there are four generations of matter fields.