A New Theory of Everything That Sets Scalars Equal To Tensors Looks Like Nonsense.

If your theory of everything has tensors set equal to scalars then it is wrong. Simply put...

Robert Zubrin's Credible Proposal to Save the ISS From Destruction.

Robert Zubrin, a great Aerospace Engineer and advocate for human space exploration, has a credible...

The Northern Lights Seen As Far South As Arizona. G5 Magnetic Storm To Continue Through Sunday.

The northern lights as one would expect and see them if they were in the frozen reaches of Canada...

DEI Without Compromise: Embracing Diversity in the LISA Global Scientific Collaboration. A ESA NASA Project.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) have become buzzwords often debated within the United States...

Hontas Farmer

My research focuses on astrophysics from massive star formation to astroparticle physics. Born and raised in Chicagoland I have lived in Bellwood, IL since 1984 and attended public schools here... Read More »

A quick lesson for the public on what scientific theories are and are not.

Sep 26 2010 | comment(s)

If you are a scientist in any field you have had to deal with a member of the public who did not understand the word theory. This blog post intends to be a simple explanation for the willing but confused.
What are theories how are they arrived at?

The word theory has it's roots in the scientific method. (In order to divorce this from creationism or the theory that the ancient Egyptians were really black Africans and other emotionally charged topics I shall write in Abstract terms. )

The scientific method has several basic steps.

Observation of some phenomena.

Cyberstalking of me by the Organisation Internationale des Intersexués OII

Sep 11 2010 | comment(s)

Cyberstalking as a way of trying to bully someone into giving them what they want on line. A certain website was set up just to slander me by The Organisation Intersex International OII. Now one Katrina C Rose a Phd candidate in history at U Iowa has gotten into the act. I have responded to OII's inane comments before. Now evidence emerges that people are keeping tabs on what I do online. That's something else entirely.

Cataclysmic cuts in European science.

Sep 07 2010 | comment(s)

The Washington Post reports on massive cuts across the world of European science. The impact on young scientist will be devastating as their research is placed on hold. All 12 accelerators at CERN will be mothballed for at least a year. The European Space Agency will face deep budget cuts as well.

The people who will not be deeply effected by this are the tenured professors. One year off will just be a year with pay for them. The people I worry about, the people who will be most effected by this, their graduate students.

The most simplistic explanation of M Theory.

Aug 06 2010 | comment(s)

When thinking of M theory and how it's popularized so much is said about it's wild and wonderful predictions. However their is not much said about how to think of the M branes themselves. I was at the beach today and thought as I was looking at the water of M theory.
The surface tension is much like an Mtheory Brane. The little waves and ripples in the surface are analogous to the ripples on lake Michigan.

I thought about cutting the video up , dubbing in cleaner audio but really is this that serious? Enjoy

A possible way to simulate inflation.

Aug 02 2010 | comment(s)

Simmulating aspects of the big bang in a particle accelerator through the coulomb explosion of a sufficiently dense bundle of fundamental particles could be practical and informative.

Suppose a team of particle physicist figure out a way to get a bunch of protons in an accelerator up to a energy density of 0.1 or 0.2 of the Planck density. Then observed the coulomb explosion of this bundle of particles. Less than a second after the big bang the whole universe would have been a soup of elementary particles at those kind of densities. What would happen. I don't know but it might be interesting to find out.

Science 2.0 - Darwinian Selection Of The Best Paper

Jun 04 2010 | comment(s)

Science 2.0 is Openness and transparency. Those buzz words mean open* access to both reading and publishing and sharing ones opinion on what is published. Transparency means a process where any editorial decisions that are made are based on known written criteria which are the minimum to keep a science 2.0 website/journal free of spam and pornography. The only question is how open and how transparent? In my opinion the answer is that science 2.0 has to be open to everyone who is interested in practicing science. There should be no initial litmus test based on educational attainment, employment status, reputation, or any other such traditional criteria.

Before I go on examples of websites that look like science 2.0 but are not quite there yet.