Many of you may know that Discover is not only a web site thathosts adiverse collection of entertaining blogs, but also publishes amonthly“magazine” printed on paper. Wild, right? Just ask this baby, who cantell youthat a magazine is kind of broken when compared to an iPad…. Read More»

Lisa Randallis a friend and collaborator, as well as a science superstar.Sheis one of the most highly cited physicists of all time, for a varietyofcontributions to field theory and particle physics, especially her workwithRaman Sundrum on warped extradimensions. Her first book, Warped Passages,was a major success,which naturally raises the question of [...]

Here’s a blast from the somewhat-recent past: a set of five lectures Igaveat CERN in 2005. It looks like the quality of the recording is prettygood.The first lecture was an overview at a colloquium level; i.e. meantforphysicists, but not necessarily with any knowledge of cosmology. The nextfourare blackboard talks with a [...]

Sometimes it’s not that hard to predict the future — everyonepayingattention (including me) knew that one of the most Nobel-worthydiscoveries out there was the1998 announcement that our universe isaccelerating. Now the achievement hasbeen officially honored, with this year’sPhysics Prize going to Saul Perlmutter, AdamRiess, and Brian Schmidt. (Greatquotes and coverage [...]

In honor of the Nobel Prize, here are some questions that are frequentlyasked about darkenergy, or should be.What is dark energy?It’s what makes theuniverse accelerate, if indeed there is a “thing” thatdoes that. (See below.)…Read More »

At2pm today, in a field not far from downtown Chicago, a final proton willsmashinto an antiproton. And then the Tevatron, the most powerfulparticleaccelerator for almost three decades, will be shut off after producingover 500 trillion proton-antiproton collisions(over 10 inverse femtobarns). TheTevatron discovered the top quark, the Bcmeson, and the tau neutrino. [...]

Probably not. But maybe! Or in other words: science as usual…. Read More»

Building in part on my talk at the time conference, Scott Aaronson has ablog post aboutentropy and complexity that you should go read right now. It’ssimilar toone I’ve been contemplating myself, but more clever and original….Read More »

Speaking of self-repair, here’s a fascinating new findingfrom MalinHernebring in Sweden. Here’s the technical paper, from a few years ago; it’spart of Hernebring’s Ph.D.thesis work. (Via Richard Dawkins’s site.)… Read More»

From Barry Greenstein’s insightful poker book, Ace onthe River:Someone showsyou a coin with a head and a tail on it. You watch him flip itten times and allten times it comes up heads. What is the probability that itwill come up headson the eleventh flip?… Read More »