The U.S. has been without a “science adviser” (technically speaking, a Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP) since the inauguration of the current president. Based on existing records, this is the longest that the U.S. has ever gone without this position being filled (492 days). […]
Science
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When I joined the existing co-authors of “Reality in the Shadows” to contribute to the book, I hesitated. It had nothing to do with them. Jim Gates is renowned in my field for his intellectual prowess, considered a founder of key ideas in the theory of supersymmetry. Frank Blitzer is […]
In our book, “Reality in the Shadows,” we devote an entire chapter to the phenomenon of the black hole (“A Shadow Where No Light Shines“). We dealt in things that are known – for instance, that black holes exist and that they can be detected using their effects on the […]
Sometimes, scientific fields move fast. They move so fast, even three authors working with a really responsive and excellent publisher who has fully embraced “print-on-demand” as a business model cannot keep up. Such is the reality of the new astronomy, gravitational wave astronomy. The LIGO, and then the VIRGO, instruments […]
In our book, “Reality in the Shadows,” Jim Gates, Frank Blitzer, and I take a look at the history of the Higgs particle, see the day the discovery was announced through the eyes of one of the co-authors (me), and explore what the Higgs might be besides being just another […]
The Nobel Prize committee planned the announcement of the 2017 prize in Physics for Tuesday, October 3, at 11:45am CET (4:45am US Central time). I got up early this morning to connect to the live stream and listen to the announcement. The Nobel Committee announced that this year’s prize goes […]
The most definitive way to diagnose Alzheimer’s Disease, a severely degenerative disease of the brain, is an autopsy. Of course, the symptoms show up earlier – memory loss, personality changes, physical changes, and differing degrees of diagnosis are achievable with cognitive tests and scans of the brain. But distinguishing Alzheimer’s […]
This week Jodi and I left for Washington D.C. on Monday for an event at the Canadian Embassy on Tuesday night. She had been invited to attend an evening celebrating science in Canada, especially Nobel Prize-winner Art McDonald and projects at SNOLAB, that nation’s premiere underground science facility. In addition, […]
Given how much the past few months have been largely about “eating the seed” corn by threatening to pillage the nation’s scientific capabilities, this week was comparably more uplifted. Having reached a tipping point with the rhetoric of the current president, scientists and science advocacy organizations started planning a “March […]
This was quite a week. It began with the long Easter weekend here in the UK, which came to an exceptional end for me on Monday at St. Martin-in-the-Fields for a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” and a night out with (and I love to say these words) my publisher and […]
This last week has been eventful! It began with an early morning return to Dallas from Connecticut, fighting the beginning of an annoying cold. After a couple of days at home, I was on a plane again, this time to London to spend 13 days working with colleagues at […]
Signs and portents abound in rhetoric from the current executive branch of the United States. Science, the only known way of establishing reliable information about the natural world, should be essential as a part of policy decision making. I try to highlight places where science and science-related agencies in the […]