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Avi Loeb And Aliens: The Right And Wrong of Science Funding. (Also Bing Image Search Brings up Porno When you Search for him)

Avi Loeb he prolific Harvard astrophysicist, dances on the edge of cosmic controversy. His research...

What Is And Is Not Plagiarism In Scientific Papers? Neri Oxman And Claudine Gay Did Nothing Seriously Wrong. A Basic Guide To Citation.

The online discourse of our time has come to the issue of plagiarism. Now Claudine Gay and Neri...

Asteroid 2007 FT3 Will Not Hit Us, And Other Predictions For 2024. Suppose It Did Hit Us.

In the past I have predicted certain things at the start of certain years.  This is a selection...

UPDATE: Claudine Gay Not Fired By Harvard. Claudine Gay Did Not Plagiarize. Weeks Later Resigns Due To Ongoing Pressure.

Christopher F Rufo has accused the president of Harvard of plagiarism in an effort so clumsy that...

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Hontas FarmerRSS Feed of this column.

Currently I am an adjunct professor at the College of DuPage. My research focuses on astrophysics from massive star formation to astroparticle physics. Born and raised in Chicagoland I have lived... Read More »

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Pluto does not meet the definition of a planet but as we will see that does not diminish it.  Far from a random and uninteresting chunk of ice, with little local gravitational influence on it’s neighborhood, it is an example of binary planetoids with tantalizing features. 

UPDATE

Most models of quantum gravity propose or predict that at very short distances space is a frothing foam where distance and time intervals themselves fluctuate rapidly.  These models predict that if light can travel long distances there will be a cumulative effect due to photons from a source gaining slightly different phases.  The precise nature of the effect, the underlying mechanisms would vary but otherwise they would be probed by the same observation of quasars, the most distant short wavelength light we can observe.
Windows 10 build 10122 marks the arrival of something like a first beta Build of Windows 10.  (Build 10130 has a bit more polish, new icons, but has the same issues as 10122.) As such, one can now start to ask the question how will my favorite games fare under Windows 10?  Back when Windows 8 came out many people from corporate IT to Gamers said "We'll wait for Windows 9".  Microsoft has skipped to 10 and kept the live tiles and touch friendly aspects of the interface it was fashionable to hate about Windows 8 and 8.1.
Google Maps searches for the words "Nigger House" will bring up a map pin pointing the white house and the underground railroad museum in Chicago.  Searches for racial and ethnic slurs on other groups produce MORE questionable results.   In fact the most targeted group is your generic "white" American.

Google says sorry over racist Google Maps White House search results. Searches using a racist slur return results pinpointing the White House in Washington DC (UK Guardian). 
On April 11th 2015 I delivered a presentation on the subject of Quantum Gravity in which I questioned the basic assumption that quantum is more fundamental than relativity.  Relativization is the name for the approach I propose.  In a nutshell let us try treating relativity as the more fundamental set of principles and make quantum field theory obey those.  The talk was well received.    There is still lots of work do on this and a lifetime to do it in, but the approach is now firmly not "crackpot".  Indeed as the money plot from my presentation shows this approach gets a very nice result for the behavior of black holes. 

The talk:
Recently two Transgender women were shot to death because they made a wrong turn and did not listen to or possibly did not understand the commands of the guards at the gate of the NSA.*  That was unfortunate.  The tragedy is in a day and age where the non PC complain that people are too PC and the PC proclaim that they are sensitive major media continue to identify those two as "men dressed as women".  With the notable exception of Reuters, all other media did not even mention the chance they were trans.