Physics Blogging Round-Up: Mundane Space, Spectroscopy, Changing Constants, Rest Energy, Magnetic Sensing, Wiffle Balls, and Revolutions [Uncertain Principles]

Another few weeks of physics blogging at Forbes, collected here for your convenience.

— Commercialization Of Space: Three Cheers For The Mundane: Some belated but brief comments on the SpaceApps conference I went to down in NYC.

— How Studying Atoms On Earth Helps Us Learn About Other Planets: As a snobby grad student in cold-atom physics, I thought of old-school spectroscopy as boring and pointless, but a recent DAMOP session showed how those classic atomic physics studies still have a lot to offer for studies of astrophysics.

— Are The Constants Of Nature Changing, And How Can We Tell?: An explanation of some of the techniques involved in trying to test exotic models of physics where values like the fine-structure constant evolve in time.

— The Simple Explanation Of Why E=mc²: Ethan “Starts With a Bang” Siegel did a post on the World’s Most Famous Equation that followed Einstein’s original math-y derivation. There’s a more elegant and illuminating way to think about it, though, that starts with changing the question.

— Using Atomic Magnets To Study Baby Humans And Baby Planets: More stuff from DAMOP, this time a couple of conversations at a poster session about cool things people I know are doing using extremely sensitive magnetic field sensors.

— Why Are There Holes In A Wiffle Ball?: In which I launch plastic balls out of a surgical tube crossbow and analyze the video to see the effects of air resistance.

— Are There Revolutions In Physics?: Chuck Klosterman’s new book sets up an argument between Neil deGrasse Tyson and Thomas Kuhn over whether physics has actually seen revolutionary changes. The answer’s probably yes, but Tyson left himself a loophole to wriggle through.

I’m generally happy with these, and very pleased with how the E=mc² thing came out, but blog traffic in general has fallen off a cliff. Not sure if that’s a function of Forbes’s increasingly irritating ads driving people away, or a start-of-summer thing, or just the presidential primaries sucking all the oxygen out of the Internet, but the last several blogging weeks have been really frustrating.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/22UWczl

Another few weeks of physics blogging at Forbes, collected here for your convenience.

— Commercialization Of Space: Three Cheers For The Mundane: Some belated but brief comments on the SpaceApps conference I went to down in NYC.

— How Studying Atoms On Earth Helps Us Learn About Other Planets: As a snobby grad student in cold-atom physics, I thought of old-school spectroscopy as boring and pointless, but a recent DAMOP session showed how those classic atomic physics studies still have a lot to offer for studies of astrophysics.

— Are The Constants Of Nature Changing, And How Can We Tell?: An explanation of some of the techniques involved in trying to test exotic models of physics where values like the fine-structure constant evolve in time.

— The Simple Explanation Of Why E=mc²: Ethan “Starts With a Bang” Siegel did a post on the World’s Most Famous Equation that followed Einstein’s original math-y derivation. There’s a more elegant and illuminating way to think about it, though, that starts with changing the question.

— Using Atomic Magnets To Study Baby Humans And Baby Planets: More stuff from DAMOP, this time a couple of conversations at a poster session about cool things people I know are doing using extremely sensitive magnetic field sensors.

— Why Are There Holes In A Wiffle Ball?: In which I launch plastic balls out of a surgical tube crossbow and analyze the video to see the effects of air resistance.

— Are There Revolutions In Physics?: Chuck Klosterman’s new book sets up an argument between Neil deGrasse Tyson and Thomas Kuhn over whether physics has actually seen revolutionary changes. The answer’s probably yes, but Tyson left himself a loophole to wriggle through.

I’m generally happy with these, and very pleased with how the E=mc² thing came out, but blog traffic in general has fallen off a cliff. Not sure if that’s a function of Forbes’s increasingly irritating ads driving people away, or a start-of-summer thing, or just the presidential primaries sucking all the oxygen out of the Internet, but the last several blogging weeks have been really frustrating.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/22UWczl