Blogs about Science

Peter Higgs, the theoretical physicist whose name graces the Higgs boson, died this week. Peter Higgs, after the Higgs boson discovery was confirmed This post isn’t an obituary: you can find plenty of those online, …

I've curated a stunning collection of 100 Google Earth images from the illustrious book Overview for your viewing pleasure!

More weird anomalous aerial apparitions in the news include Kay Smythe's reports on what appears to be giant astronauts twirling in the sky. Smythe's dry humor rises to the occasion, and one wonders whether some …

There’s not much in this post, but I wanted to mark a significant date. It is the first day of the rest of 2023, but in addition, it is the beginning of a new chapter …

Last time I presented a class of agent-based models where agents hop around a graph in a stochastic way. Each vertex of the graph is some ‘state’ agents can be in, and each edge is …

Open Academic Publication Posted 10/28/2023 I’m currently at a workshop on open practices across disciplines, and one topic of discussion is how to change the academic publishing process to be more accessible to both authors …

The dream of soaring in the sky like a bird has captivated the human mind for ages. Although many failed, some eventually succeeded in achieving that goal. These days we take air transportation for granted, …

In a Tablet Magazine article titled “How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers” posted on March 6, 2024, Professor of Statistics and Data Science Abraham Wyner from the Wharton School at the University …

Pre-registration is the best and possibly only solution to p-hacking. Ten years ago, pre-registrations were virtually unheard of in psychology, but they have become increasingly common since then. I was curious just how common they …

It’s now Round 5 of “benzene in your products is giving you cancer” – over the last three years, this “known human carcinogen” been found in hand sanitiser, sunscreen, deodorant, dry shampoo, and now benzoyl …

The effect varies for different people. Take a moment and look at this. Some people don’t see anything special: just a blue iris in a red eye. Image: CC-BY Tom Stafford 2022 For me though, …

The definitive New Things Under the Sun post.

In defense of Academia The Breslow saga Interview with Scott Alexander On Lockheed Martin's Skunkworks An interview with the founder of Cyclarity, a company working on reversing atherosclerosis On East Asian drinking culture The ultimate …

A few items on the science outreach front: The Oscars of Science were held Saturday night in Hollywood, with a long list of A-listers in attendance, led by Kim Kardashian. More here, here and here. …

What’s the best way to solve hard problems? That’s the question at the heart of a subfield of computer science called computational complexity theory. It’s a hard question to answer, but flip it around and …

It is quite common that people get asked what they think is the most import development in technology or the most significant technological invention in human history. Apart from the ubiquitous wheel, which is almost …

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? The week at Retraction Watch featured: Publisher flags papers found by university to involve misconduct more than a year ago The dean …

Most astrophysics are pretty convinced that 80% of the matter in the universe is some invisible stuff that they can’t detect - dark matter. The idea has become more popular recently modified gravity ran into …

For those who don’t yet know from their other social media: a week ago the cryptographer Yilei Chen posted a preprint, eprint.iacr.org/2024/555, claiming to give a polynomial-time quantum algorithm to solve lattice problems. For example, …

Graphene has been hailed as a wonder material, but it also set off a rush to find other promising atomically thin materials. Now researchers have managed to create a 2D version of gold they call …