Boxes and paradoxes
By Marjorie Senechal
It was eerie, a gift from the grave. But I thank serendipity, not spooks. The gift, it turns out, was given forty years ago.
True or false? Ten myths about Isaac Newton
Nearly three hundred years since his death, Isaac Newton is as much a myth as a man. The mythical Newton abounds in contradictions; he is a semi-divine genius and a mad alchemist, a somber and solitary thinker and a passionate religious heretic.
The Man in the Monkeynut Coat and the men in the yellow jerseys
By Kersten Hall
It is a safe bet that the name of Pierre Rolland rings very few bells among the British public. In 2012, Rolland, riding for Team Europcar finished in eighth place in the overall final classifications of the Tour de France whilst Sir Bradley Wiggins has since become a household name following his fantastic achievement of being the first British person ever to win the most famous cycle race in the world.
Feynman diagrams and the fly in the ointment
By Tom Lancaster and Stephen J. Blundell
Sometimes it’s the fly in the ointment, the thing that spoils the purity of the whole picture, which leads to the big advances in science. That’s exactly what happened at a conference in Shelter Island, New York in 1947 when a group of physicists gathered to discuss the latest breakthroughs in their field which seemed at first sight to make everything more complicated.
Inferring the unconfirmed: the no alternatives argument
By Richard Dawid
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”. Thus Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes describe a crucial part of his method of solving detective cases. Sherlock Holmes often takes pride in adhering to principles of scientific reasoning.
18 facts you never knew about cheese
Have you often lain awake at night, wishing that you knew more about cheese? Fear not! Your prayers have been answered; here you will find 18 of the most delicious cheese facts, all taken from Michael Tunick’s The Science of Cheese. Bon Appétit.
BICEP2 finds gravitational waves from near the dawn of time
By Andrew Liddle
The cosmology community is abuzz with news from the BICEP2 experiment of the discovery of primordial gravitational waves, through their signature in the cosmic microwave background. If verified, this will be a clear indication that the very young Universe underwent a period of acceleration, known as cosmic inflation.
Minority women chemists yesterday and today
By Jeannette Brown
As far as we know, the first African American woman PhD was Dr. Marie Daly in 1947. I am still searching for an earlier one. Women chemists, especially minority women chemists, have always been the underdogs in science and chemistry.
8 марта 1979: Women’s Day in the Soviet Union
By Marjorie Senechal
“March 8 is Women’s Day, a legal holiday,” I wrote to my mother from Moscow. “This is one of the many cute cards that is on sale now, all with flowers somewhere on them. We hope March 8 finds you well and happy, and enjoying an early spring! Alas, here it is -30° C again.”
A record-breaking lunar impact
On 11 September 2013, an unusually long and bright impact flash was observed on the Moon. Its peak luminosity was equivalent to a stellar magnitude of around 2.9. What happened? A meteorite with a mass of around 400 kg hit the lunar surface at a speed of over 61,000 kilometres per hour.
Frank Close on the Higgs boson
In 2013, the Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded jointly to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs for their work on what is now commonly known as the Higgs field and the Higgs boson. The existence of this fundamental particle, responsible for the creation of mass, was confirmed by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in 2012.
Peak shopping and the decline of traditional retail
By David M. Levinson
Shopping trips now comprise fewer than 9% of all trips, down from 12.5% in 2000, according to our analysis of the Twin Cities Travel Behavior Inventories. This is consistent with other results from the American Time Use Survey. They are down by about one-third in a decade.
A brief and incomplete history of astronomy
By Ayana Young and Georgia Mierswa
NASA posted an update in the last week of December that the international space station would be visible from the New York City area—and therefore the Oxford New York office—on the night of 28 December 2013. While there were certainly a vast number of NASA super fans rushed outside that particularly clear night (this writer included), it’s difficult for recent generations to recall a time when space observations and achievements like this contributed significantly to the cultural zeitgeist.
Is science inconsistent?
By Peter Vickers
An important part of life is judging when to be sceptical about scientific claims, and when to trust in those claims and take actions accordingly. Often this comes down to the task of weighing up evidence. But we might think that when the science in question is internally inconsistent, or self-contradictory, we have an easy decision.
Coherence in photosynthesis
By Jessica M. Anna, Gregory D. Scholes, and Rienk van Grondelle
Photosynthesis is responsible for life on our planet, from supplying the oxygen we breathe to the food that we eat. The process of photosynthesis is complex, involving many protein complexes and enzymes that work together in a concerted effort to convert solar energy to chemical bonds.
The Crab Nebula
By Professor Sir Francis Graham-Smith
The Crab Nebula and the pulsar at its centre are endlessly fascinating. The pulsar is a neutron star, with the same mass as our Sun but only the size of a city.