Author: Matthew R. Francis
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The week in review (September 15-21): Patrick Stewart edition
Another light week for publishing, but you’ll see the fruits of my labors soon! In the meantime, I note that Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan are also bowler hat connoisseurs. Three years of black holes and “yo momma” jokes (Galileo’s Pendulum): Monday marked the third anniversary of my first post at Galileo’s Pendulum, or rather…
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The Solar System boundary and the week in review (September 8-14)
‘Twas a busy week! High-resolution observations show how black hole jets churn galactic gas (Ars Technica): One portion of my PhD thesis involved galactic feedback. That’s the process by which jets from black holes at the center of galaxies push material away, potentially affecting star formation and other activity. This article addressed the observation of…
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The week in review (September 1-7)
The last week was especially busy because I attended the launch of the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. I will have a lot to say about that launch, LADEE, and related topics later on, but suffice to say it was a great experience — increased because it was…
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The week in review (August 25-31)
Welcome to the weekly round-up of stories I wrote this week, wherever they hide. A tour of physics, Angry Birds style (Double X Science): The odds are good that you’ve played Angry Birds, even if (like me) you don’t own a device that will run the game. My colleague Rhett Allain wrote a book for…
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It’s a 24-hour dance…er, science party!
Tomorrow, I’ll be spending an hour talking about my work with CosmoAcademy: the online classes offered through CosmoQuest. However, my colleagues Pamela Gay (AKA StarStryder) and Nicole Gugliucchi (AKA the Noisy Astronomer) will be hosting an entire 24 hour fundraising hangout! Please check in tomorrow, watch the conversations, and please please donate if you can.…
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The priors don’t lie: all the ladies love Bayesian statistics
Statistics is rarely sexy, sometimes satisfying, occasionally misused, but useful enough that more people should know how to use it than do. (Insert obvious condom joke here.) However, a particular method in statistics got additional attention last fall during the United States national elections: Bayesian inference. I wrote two pieces last week, drawing from a…
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A century of the Bohr atom
Many of us are familiar with the Bohr atom: a simple model with a nucleus and planet-like electrons orbiting in circular paths. It’s a useful picture, even though it’s not complete. Bohr proposed it in 1913, but it took about ten more years for physicists to work out why it worked — and to refine…
Bowler Hat Science 