Category Archives: Science outreach

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Ryan Gosling has not endorsed this class, but if he knew about it, he would.

Ryan Gosling has not endorsed this class, but if he knew about it, he would.

OK, one part of that title isn’t true, unless Ryan Gosling signs up for the class in the next few days. There are still spots in my new online class “The Universe in a Box”, beginning next Tuesday, April 2. Sign up today!

Also, we’re beginning another new class at CosmoAcademy: “The Sun and Stellar Evolution“, taught by Ray Sanders. He’ll teach you about the life cycle of stars, from formation to death and beyond, and what our own Sun can tell us about the whole process. The class begins April 15.

Learn cosmology with me and Ryan Gosling

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Two BIG THINGS coming up!

A box containing a representative sample of the entire Universe.

A box containing a representative sample of the entire Universe.

April will be a busy month for the Bowler Hat: I begin my new gig as Director of CosmoAcademy in earnest, and I will be traveling to New York City to participate in the ScienceOnline Teen conference. Here’s the scoop:

  • The Universe we inhabit inspires some of the biggest questions about meaning, purpose, origins, and endings. However, the study of the Universe is also a serious science, blending aspects of astronomy and physics into one of the most dynamic areas of research. So, in that spirit, CosmoAcademy is offering a new class: Introduction to Cosmology! The class begins April 2; sign up at our EventBrite page, and check out the details over at CosmoQuest.
  • ScienceOnline Teen is designed to create “connections between students & teachers and the online scientific community and discuss how new media is changing the world of science. The conference is informal and based on conversations, not presentations. So participants will interact during the entire event.  Teens will moderate the sessions and ensure that the topics are teen-driven and teen-focused.” The goal: inspiration. The method: bowler hats science! We’ve got some great people from a variety of backgrounds and interests.
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question box from Super Mario BrothersWriter/editor David Manly posed a series of questions to scientists and writers, soliciting short responses on topics of broad interest. Those interviewed were shark researcher David Schiffman, paleontology writer/sauropod snogger Brian Switek, and me. If you want to know who would win an arm-wrestling contest between a human and a Tyrannosaurus, or how we know black holes exist if we can’t see them, this post is for you.

A Manly conversation

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Black holes don’t suck

Yesterday (November 10, 2012) I spoke about black holes at the Richmond Public Library. For those who couldn’t make it, or who were there but want more information, here’s the essence of the talk, along with the relevant images that formed my slides. Please leave any questions you have in the comments, and thanks to everyone who came out (despite the insane marathon-related traffic)!

Black Holes Don’t Suck

(Yes, I’ve used that joke before. So sue me.)

Discussions of black holes fall into two distinct categories. The first is the sexy string theory/quantum gravity/Stephen Hawking category, all about time warps, wormholes, extra dimensions, Bekenstein entropy, and baby universes; the second discusses the real black holes discovered in our galaxy and beyond. While the sexy stuff is a lot of fun to talk about, that’s not what I discussed: it’s speculative, and at the present time impossible to test. (Some of it by its very nature is impossible to test, since we can’t get access to the region inside a black hole. More on that shortly.) However, I think real astronomical black holes are just as interesting, and over the last several decades astronomers have realized how important they are in shaping the galaxies they inhabit. Continue reading →

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Ada Lovelace, 1815-1852 [Credit: Wikipedia]

For Ada Lovelace Day, I compiled a list of many of the best science writers I know:

Last year, I celebrated Emmy Noether, perhaps the greatest mathematician of the 20th century. This year (largely because I’m swamped with other work), I’m stealing a great idea from Ed Yong, and celebrating living writers who are my friends, colleagues, and influences. This list is in no particular order, isn’t anywhere close to complete, and has some overlap with Ed’s list. My main criteria are that these are writers I read regularly, so their interests mix with mine to some degree. (Writers marked with an asterisk* are people I have met in Real Life, whatever that signifies.) Leave your own favorites and influences in the comments! [Read more....]

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

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Over the last year, I’ve become very involved with the Science Online community. This is a group focused around an annual (un)conference, whose purpose is the communication of science through electronic media. Here’s an interview I did with Bora Zivkovic, one of the leading figures in the Science Online community. Key excerpt:

I still think of myself as an educator even now, though I’m no longer in the college classroom. I want to share the wonder of physics to those who think of it as something beyond them, or even something to fear. In this era when the very goals of education are being challenged (at least for the children of poor and working-class families), it seems more important than ever to stress the importance of science, not just in daily lives, but in our intellectual structure. Science can be a source of joy and wonder for everyone, whether they are scientists or not.

Science Online and me