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 […]
Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” could almost, taken at face value, be the plot of a movie in the “Saw” series [1]. Prisoners in a cave, born into chains and forced forever to face a single wall, know nothing of the reality of what lives behind them. A fire somewhere […]
Final Update: What Became Law Dec. 22, 2017 You can love or hate the tax overhaul that Congress passed and the President just signed into law, but there is one thing to celebrate in the bill. More specifically, there is something NOT in the bill worth celebrating: changes to qualified […]
“Reality in the Shadows” is a book that required years to write. I was the latest addition to the creative team, but it is very much a shared vision between three co-authors each with different perspectives on the subject matter. Jim Gates has a keen mathematical mind and delights in […]
A human being is the sum of the influences of all their caregivers and bullies, successes and failures, dreams and fears… all bound together by that something special each of us has inside, that thing that ultimately makes each of us unique. I am no different. As a teenager, and […]
“It’s here!” Mandy came running into the house, waving a letter in the air. Levar looked up from reading the news and forced a smile. They’d been waiting for this day for months… hopeful for some good news, but mostly dreading it. Mandy plopped down on the couch next to […]
Senator Orrin Hatch recently said, “I grew up in a shack with a Meadow Gold Dairy sign for a wall. I worked as a janitor to pay for law school. I believe in opportunity because I’ve lived it. And that’s what we’re going to deliver with #TaxReform.” https://twitter.com/orrinhatch/status/931387205578317827 He is […]
Write your member of Congress today and tell them that making graduate tuition waivers count as part of taxable income will spell doom for higher education in STEM in the US and threaten the US STEM workforce. https://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ Here is my letter to Congressmen Pete Sessions and Sam Johnson: Dear […]
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 […]
This weekend is drawing to a close. I write this not from Dallas, where Jodi and I finally returned home 2 weeks ago after a brief (and originally unplanned) vacation in Wisconsin, but from the SMU campus in Taos, NM. It is Sunday morning. The past week – the first […]