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Forget Finding A Pro-Science Documentary On Netflix

Forget Finding A Pro-Science Documentary On Netflix

Aug 18 2017 | comment(s)

You'll be able to the agriculture documentary called "Food Evolution" on Hulu soon enough but for obvious reasons the filmmakers went to Netflix first. Though the streaming service has thrown $20 billion at everything, they had no interest in a pro-science documentary.

They may have a good reason. Their media buyers and audience don't want science. Like all documentaries, it is a passion project so when disappointments happen, lots of speculation occurs among the fans. Some believe it's a conspiracy against science, like that Netflix is politically aligned with the groups who make their money scaring people about food. (1) Others like me give them a pass and say science documentaries are probably just not a draw for their audience.

Why The Solar Eclipse This August Is A Wonder Of Nature And Not Something To Be Scared Of

Why The Solar Eclipse This August Is A Wonder Of Nature And Not Something To Be Scared Of

Aug 16 2017 | comment(s)

This is another of my "Doomsday Debunking" articles, using science and astronomy to debunk some of the crazy modern myths about the end of the world.  This time it's the idea that the eclipse of the sun on 21st August in the US is a "sign" that the world is about to end. If you are an astronomer or scientists you will just LOL at this for sure. But for some people this fear is like a living nightmare for them. They contact me, extremely scared that the world is, literally, about to end because of this eclipse. They probably flunked maths and physics at school and just don't have the scientific and astronomical background to evaluate it.

Revenge Of The Slimeballs - Part 3

Revenge Of The Slimeballs - Part 3

Aug 15 2017 | comment(s)

This is the third part of Chapter 3 of the book "Anomaly! Collider Physics and the Quest for New Phenomena at Fermilab". The chapter recounts the pioneering measurement of the Z mass by the CDF detector, and the competition with SLAC during the summer of 1989. The title of the post is the same as the one of chapter 3, and it refers to the way some SLAC physicists called their Fermilab colleagues, whose hadron collider was to their eyes obviously inferior to the electron-positron linear collider.
American Workers Have It Good, But Find Plenty To Complain About On Surveys

American Workers Have It Good, But Find Plenty To Complain About On Surveys

Aug 14 2017 | comment(s)

Survey results show that workers believe the American workplace is physically and emotionally taxing, and they don't like the social environment. Since we are only now recovering from an economic malaise, they also worry about unstable work schedules. Some cited unpleasant and potentially hazardous working conditions.
QED: First Direct Evidence Of High Energy Light-by-light Scattering, Where Photons Interact And Change Direction

QED: First Direct Evidence Of High Energy Light-by-light Scattering, Where Photons Interact And Change Direction

Aug 14 2017 | comment(s)

Physicists from the ATLAS experiment at CERN have confirmed one of the oldest predictions of quantum electrodynamics (QED), finding the first direct evidence of high energy light-by-light scattering, a very rare process in which two photons – particles of light – interact and change direction.
Nomophobia: Made Up Disease Or Real Smartphone Anxiety Condition?

Nomophobia: Made Up Disease Or Real Smartphone Anxiety Condition?

Aug 14 2017 | comment(s)

Nomophobia, defined as smartphone separation anxiety,  is when people perceive smartphones as part of their extended selves.

Counselors, lawyers and therapists are aggressively pushing it as the fad diagnosis of 2017, but what behaviors and descriptors can help identify people with high nomophobia ? A new paper compares how people considered to have high and low nomophobic tendencies perceive and value their smartphones.
KIC 8462852: Modeling D792 as a Ringed Planet With sim-transit-lc

KIC 8462852: Modeling D792 as a Ringed Planet With sim-transit-lc

Aug 13 2017 | comment(s)

This will be my informal introduction to sim-transit-lc, an open source toolset I've been working on. The toolset is meant to be a general purpose light curve analysis and optimization system, but today we'll only be looking at one built-in transit type: ringed planets.

The D792 dip of Boyajian's star (or KIC 8462852) is one of the most peculiar ever recorded. It's not only considerably deeper than most exoplanetary dips, but it also doesn't have the usual V or U shape; plus it's asymmetric.
Not Just Another Rant About TSA

Not Just Another Rant About TSA

Aug 13 2017 | comment(s)

No, this is a theoretically based rant about TSA. My students can get credit for reading it!

Tense Situation On North Korea - Not Like Cold War Cuban Missile Crisis However

Tense Situation On North Korea - Not Like Cold War Cuban Missile Crisis However

Aug 12 2017 | comment(s)

With all the tense situation about North Korea, I thought I should do a new post about the situation there. I'm doing this as part of my "Doomsday Debunked" articles I do to help people who are often very scared that the world will end in one way or another. First this is not a risk of global nuclear war. It’s nothing like the Cuban missile crisis. There we had two major powers facing each other on a hair-trigger. And each had the capability of destroying the other’s military capabilities.

Why We Can't Use Hubble To See The Lunar Lander - How Could We See It In High Resolution?

Why We Can't Use Hubble To See The Lunar Lander - How Could We See It In High Resolution?

Aug 12 2017 | comment(s)

Have you wondered why we can't see the Apollo landing sites from Earth? Moon is so far away that even the ISS at around 108 meters in length would span just over one pixel if Hubble were to photograph it on the Moon at its highest resolution. From NASA:

Can Hubble see the Apollo landing sites on the Moon?

No, Hubble cannot take photos of the Apollo landing sites.

“An object on the Moon 4 meters (4.37 yards) across, viewed from HST, would be about 0.002 arcsec in size. The highest resolution instrument currently on HST is the Advanced Camera for Surveys at 0.03 arcsec. So anything we left on the Moon cannot be resolved in any HST image. It would just appear as a dot.”

We are living in an Information Society

We are living in an Information Society

Aug 10 2017 | comment(s)


In recent years, we have access to a wealth of information thanks to advances in Information and Communication Technology. However, as will be discussed below, the increase of information does not imply more knowledge.
 
As dictionary.com tells us that knowledge is "the acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, as from the study or investigation; general erudition", while information is the "the act or fact of informing". So I can easily deduce that knowledge is the analysis of information. As a result, I believe that a knowledgeable society must be characterized by a constant innovation which could change our lives (remember that this term is not new and was first introduced by Peter Drucker in his book "The Age of Discontinuity" in 1969).
 
Fast Food Restaurant Density Correlated To Lower Levels Of Obesity

Fast Food Restaurant Density Correlated To Lower Levels Of Obesity

Aug 10 2017 | comment(s)

We know that corporations go where their market is. Whole Foods sets up shop in wealthy, progressive counties while smaller companies like Monsanto market to rural farmers. What about fast food companies? The claims have been that since there are obese people near places where high densities of restaurants exist, the restaurants must cause the obesity. Less considered is that people might move to where more food choices are and where those are dense, such as in cities, people tend to be more educated.
Puzzle: Which Tank Fills First? What Happens If You Increase The Flow Rate? Someone Tried - With A 3D Printer

Puzzle: Which Tank Fills First? What Happens If You Increase The Flow Rate? Someone Tried - With A 3D Printer

Aug 09 2017 | comment(s)

You may have seen this tank filling puzzle that's gone viral. But have you wondered what happens at a faster flow rate? Someone has tried it out, with a 3D printer. First though, let's look at the original puzzle. 

 Here it is.

Look closely, as it says.

Most people answer “G”.

If that's your answer too, take another close look. Many of the pipes are blocked, The line that blocks off D from C is not a mistake.

To find the real answer - well first, it looks like it's just a drip at a low flow rate from the drawing. So let's assume that..

From A to B to C is straightforward. None of them can fill before the next one.

Higgs Decays To Tau Leptons: CMS Sees Them First

Higgs Decays To Tau Leptons: CMS Sees Them First

Aug 09 2017 | comment(s)

I have recently been reproached, by colleagues who are members of the competing ATLAS experiment, of misusing the word "see" in this blog, in the context of searches for physics signals. That was because I reported that CMS recently produced a very nice result where we measure the rate of H->bb decays in events where the Higgs boson recoils against a energetic jet; that signal is not statistically significant, so they could argue that CMS did not "see" anything, as I wrote in the blog title. 
Quaternionic rotation

Quaternionic rotation

Aug 08 2017 | comment(s)

The complex phase of a quaternion becomes apparent when a (complex) plane is put through its real axis and its imaginary part. In multiplication, quaternions do not commute. Thus, in general a b / a ≠b.
Arabian Herbs Analyzed As Potential Cancer Treatments

Arabian Herbs Analyzed As Potential Cancer Treatments

Aug 08 2017 | comment(s)

Cancer is a leading cause of illness and death worldwide. In 2015, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recorded 8.8 million cancer-related deaths and nearly twice that are diagnosed each year. Since people are living longer, cancer diagnoses is likely to continue to increase by about 70% for at least the next two decades.

Given that more cancers are likely in the developing world, the search is on for treatments  that are simple and inexpensive to manufacture. The answer may lie in herbal medicine. The problem, as always, is that while there are numerous anecdotes about those, there are few studies. 
The action of the characteristic function

The action of the characteristic function

Aug 08 2017 | comment(s)

The Hilbert Book Model contains a base model that is constructed from a quaternionic infinite dimensional separable Hilbert space and its unique non-separable companion that embeds its separable partner. The quaternionic number system exists in many versions that differ in the way that they are ordered. Cartesian and polar coordinate systems can define these orderings and let these versions act as parameter spaces. These parameter spaces can be represented by eigenspaces of special reference operators that reside in the separable Hilbert space. The operators connect the countable eigenvalues with an orthonormal base of eigenvectors. This procedure only applies the rational members of the number system.

Perceptibility and Recognition at Low Dose Rate

Perceptibility and Recognition at Low Dose Rate

Aug 02 2017 | comment(s)

With respect to the visual perception, the human optic tract closely resembles the visual tract of all vertebrates.

Metabolically Unhealthy Thin People

Metabolically Unhealthy Thin People

Aug 01 2017 | comment(s)

Just like some people are overweight but healthy - an obesity paradox - some people are thin but have a three-fold higher risk of mortality and/or cardiovascular events.

Weight is not the best way to understand metabolic health, according to an analysis of lean, overweight and obese people.

A new paper claims that ~20 percent of normal weight adults are still metabolically unhealthy and have a higher risk of mortality and/or cardiovascular events than metabolically healthy obese subjects. Oddly, a reduced accumulation of fat in the lower body puts lean people at risk.

One size does not fit all
The Voynich Manuscript in Latin

The Voynich Manuscript in Latin

Aug 01 2017 | comment(s)

The Voynich Manuscript in Latin

[edit]  while I am unable to respond to comments here due to a bug, I am making use of Neven Curlin's Arctic Forum to exchange comments under the topic It is an ancient manuscript.

The entire Voynich Manuscript has been converted into a readable text document which clearly shows that the underlying language is Latin.  The VM in Latin is released as a beta version at the foot of this article.