Jawdropping (also ft ICT sector reports, fiscal calculators and Mongolia)

Well, that was my reaction to this video, at any rate. Picked up off Twitter, from fellow Sciblogger Mr David Winter (@TheAtavism) himself*, it’s stunning high-speed camera work explaining the mad physics behind the Prince Rupert’s Drop. Don’t know what that is? Well, watch the video, and the marvel, MARVEL I SAY, at what you’ll […]

F1000 Research (squeee!), Higgs hyping and string theory

Huzzah, more open science news! Plans were released today for the launch of F1000 Research, an F1000 initiative. F1000, for those for whom the name doesn’t ring a bell, are the ‘Faculty of 1000, which release post-publication peer reviews of scientific literature. They often do big metareviews. And they are, at least to my knowledge, […]

TOSP Episode 11: November 21st 2011

[Original post on the Sciblogs The Official Sciblogs Podcast site] And we’re back with another new episode of TOSP! This week, aimee and Elf talk of many things, including the winners of this year’s top NZ science award(s), the world’s lightest material, stem cell research, sexism in science (‘womanspace’), a nanocar, still-faster-than-light neutrinos, the casimir […]

TOSP Episode 9: November 7th 2011

[Original post on the Sciblogs The Official Sciblogs Podcast site] Greetings, dear listeners! This week, aimee was joined once again by Chelfyn Baxter, co-host of the g33k show, to talk through some of the science stories of the last week.  They included using lasers to rip the universe a new one, Boeing building spacecraft, the […]

FTL neutrinos FTW!

* Ahem *  Well, not quite.              (Note: FTL = Faster Than Light) Not entirely, at least. Those of you watching the science news today may have noticed an awful lot of excited wittering about results being published today which suggest the neutrinos may have broken the speed of light. Please note the use of ‘may’ […]

Seeing cosmic rays

Like, for real. With the naked eye. Another post courtesy of Josh Bailey*, who has been building cloud chambers and documenting the resulting, well, results. I _meant_ to write on the subject, since it’s so frikkin’ cool, but have been somewhat swamped by other things in which I am involved**. So! Without further ado: —————————— […]

Physics shorthand

As you may or may not be aware, I have something of a physics Jones. I’ve found the subject interesting ever since school, although I’ll freely admit that my contact therewith has been somewhat intermittent :) Recently, however, and for a slew of reasons, I’ve been getting back into it.  Trying, if nothing else, to […]

Wine: good for superconductors, too

A very quick pointer, for those who don’t see my tweets :) Once again, arXiv.org rises to the fore*, with an interesting application for alcohol. Not content with fighting cancer and improving lifespan, or being good for our bones (and I’m sure that research will at some point show that single malt whisky** is highly […]

On homeopathics, and physics

After a somewhat extended sojourn, I have returned, once more, unto the breach.  Dear friends. Just a brief one today, as I find my stride again, comprised of two bits. ————————- First up!  Homeopathy.  As y’all may have realised, I am most certainly not one of its proponents.  Anything but, in fact (which reminds me, […]