Category: Ars Technica
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The week in review (October 20-26)
I had a wonderful time at GeekGirlCon; thanks again to Dr. Rubidium, AKA Nick Fury, for putting together the DIY Science Zone, and to everyone who made it a great event. I have a more formal wrap-up post in the works, but in the meantime, have some science writing. The river of spacetime (Galileo’s Pendulum):…
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The week in review (October 13 – 19)
I’m at GeekGirlCon this weekend, so I’m busy with non-writing activities as part of the DIY Science Zone. Thanks to our Fearless Leader Dr. “Nick Fury” Rubidium for putting our part of the event together! Where Nature Hides the Darkest Mystery of All (Nautilus): Even though there’s no solid barrier, the event horizon of a…
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Two weeks in review (September 29 – October 12, 2013)
My black holes class and other responsibilities ate my brain the last two weeks, so I forgot to post a “week in review” last week. So, here’s the highlights from the last two weeks. If it’s more heavily weighted toward black holes even than usual, that’s hardly surprising. Of fire and ice and Harlow Shapley…
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The week in review (September 22-28)
I spent much of the week sick, but that doesn’t stop me. I care about you, people. All black holes, great and small (Galileo’s Pendulum): As my regular readers have probably figured out, I love black holes. I could probably find an excuse to write about them most days. So, why not take an online…
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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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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 