Forget emotional arguments about whether Black Lives Matter or All Lives Matter or any specific case.  There is one easy to verify fact that proves that policing in the United States is Broken. We give police a 9mm Glock that carries about 15 rounds or a similar gun.  Then we give them a 1 shot Taser.  All things being equal in a fight if the police use their one taser shot and it does not work, or misses they are going to have to shoot.  All things being equal if they must choose in a split second how to stop person A from shooting or stabbing person B there are 15 chances to one that they will use the Taser. 

It did not have to be this way.

Humanity has not found a fifth force of nature. This is a warning to the media at large. Please do not tell people muon g-2 found a fifth force of nature or make any other such claims.  There are a few serious issues to consider with how the recent muon g-2 experiment results are being reported on.

Basic physics can answer this question in a few different ways and it gives an insight into just how hard it will be to get the Ever Given out of the Canal.  First there is the question of how to quantify in scientific terms “hitting hard”.   This can be done with a number of distinctly different but related concepts, momentum (p), force (F) and kinetic energy (T).  Once we consider these numbers the task before the salvage crews can be understood at a very basic level.

UPDATE: On social media there is video which shows that the Ever Given appears to be unstuck and is floating.

Could we be living in a computer simulation of some sort?  In priciple physics will never be able to directly test this.  It is an appealing idea, mentioned by everyone from scientist to pop culture figures.  It appeals as this would naturally explain certain foundational mysteries of science.  Such as the fact that we can write mathematical laws that predict precisely what will occur in nature.  Can this question even be interrogated scientifically?  Is the question “Are we living in a simulation?” a matter for science or belief?

Orbital mechanics have dictated that the USA, UAE and PRC who sent probes to arrive at mars formed a defacto fleet of probes to the Red Planet. Arriving next week NASA and the PRC will independently be landing probes at Mars. When the rover Curiosity landed at Mars via a risky jet pack landing. It was the first time the “sky crane” had been tried. This time it will be done among even more daunting terrain. The most amazing part of it all is that it has to be done by the computers on the craft itself. There is no way it could be remotely controlled. From Earth as even at the speed of light, at the distance from Earth to Mars the light speed delay is about ten minutes. As this is happening at Mars the Sun is actually closer to us than Mars is.

Oumuamua was hypothesized by Avi Loeb to be an alien probe due to its apparent very flat shape and hyperbolic path through the solar system.  It was almost certainly not an alien probe.  The orbit indicates that it is an object that was never gravitationally bound to the Sun, and it is hard to imagine how a natural asteroid can appear to be quite so flat but while this makes it an odd ball it does not make it a space probe.  How can you as a reader or producer of science know this?  Occam’s razor, given competing explanations that fit the data equally well the simpler one is more likely to be true.  What leads many non-scientists astray is blind “belief” in prestige and expertise.