March 2006
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Minos observes neutrino mass
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More evidence for neutrino mass has been seen by the MINOS Experiment in the Soudan mine in Minnesota. More precisely, the experiment extends and corroborates evidence for neutrino mass that has been gathering over the past 40 years, speeding up mightily in the last decade. The first evidence was the deficit of neutrinos from the…
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Eclipse sick day
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Sorry I’ve been so quiet lately! The term is over, and our version of Spring Break has begun — more time for blog posts. Without any pressing teaching engagements, I’m home sick from work today. Instead of doing what I ought (getting rest, or at least reading my students’ excellent PhD theses), I spent a…
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WMAP
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As promised, the team behind the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) satellite have released their lovely new results. WMAP measures fluctuations in the CMB (which I’ve already written about a lot), and in 2003 they released high-resolution, high-sensitivity maps of the CMB over the whole sky. Today, they updated those maps, and also released new…
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WMAP results due soon!
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After a couple of years of waiting, the team behind the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) satellite seem ready to release some new results. WMAP measures fluctuations in the CMB (which I’ve already written about a lot), and in 2003 they released high-resolution, high-sensitivity maps of the CMB over the whole sky. (New results have…
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King of Some Media
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Print: I was interviewed yesterday by the Daily Express, about a recent Gamma-Ray Burst that occurred when the universe was under a billion years old (less than a tenth its present age). GRBs are thought to be from “Collapsars”, the explosions of massive, rapidly rotating stars. This observation, originally by the Swift Satellite, then followed…
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You get what you pay for
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There’s a report on the BBC that the Labour party may have given out a large number of “honours” (Knighthoods, Lordships, peerages, etc.) to their biggest donors. Maybe it’s my (small-‘R’) republican tendencies coming out, but, um, who cares? Seems better than, say, giving out political favors. Or contracts to run the very successful operation…
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Vint Cerf
Went to see a talk at Imperial’s Department of Computing* by Vint Cerf, currently Google‘s “Chief internet evangelist.” But Cerf’s roots are deep in tech: at Stanford in the seventies he co-invented the TCP/IP protocol which controls how information moves around the internet. I discovered that this was mostly a Google recruiting talk for Imperial’s…
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NASA Science Decimated
The Bush administration has cut $3 billion from NASA’s science budget over the next five years, “postponing” (until who knows when) important science in favor of getting back to the moon (in more than twice the time it took to develop the program in the 60s) and then to Mars. This comes on the heels…
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