CERN has begun webcasting a public seminar in which there may or may not be some announcement regarding the significance or otherwise of recent observations regarding the possible existence of something that might be the Higgs boson. I am not a nuclear physicist, so I will try and keep up but will mainly be trying to catch the significance of the observations they have collected so far. In case these are talked about in terms of sigmas (there's scuttlebutt going around that this is a 3.5 sigma event),
here's a table of sigma and probability.
[more inside]
posted by carter
on Dec 13, 2011 -
85 comments
Facebook Places is the latest creation of the Facebook team. Similar to Foursquare, it seeks to make it easier for people to share their location with their friends. Perhaps predictably, people are publicizing
steps for how to disable it on your Facebook account.
Over at Slate, writer Farhad Manjoo debates the impact Places might have on society.
Ready, set, go!
posted by elder18
on Aug 20, 2010 -
69 comments
On July 17th, NASA's
Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite
completed its first survey of the entire sky viewable from Earth. After just seven months in orbit, WISE -- a precursor to the planned
James Webb Space Telescope -- has returned more than a million images that provide a close look at
celestial objects ranging from
distant galaxies to
asteroids. The first release of WISE data, covering about 80 percent of the sky,
will be delivered to the astronomical community in May of next year, but in the meantime we can see some of the images and animations that NASA has released to date: Galleries
(containing just a small selection of images):
1,
2,
3,
4. Videos and Animations:
1,
2 [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jul 24, 2010 -
11 comments
"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. " -
Henry Beston, naturalist and writer.
[more inside]
posted by jquinby
on Jun 24, 2009 -
15 comments
The Nature of Light and Color in the Open Air "Moreover, this book is written for all those who love Nature; for the young people going out into the wide world and gathering together round the camp-fire; for the painter who admires but does not understand the light and colour of the landscape; for those living in the country; for all who delight in travelling; and also for town-dwellers, for whom, even in the noise and clamour of our dark streets, the manifestations of Nature remain." - Marcel Minnaert
[more inside]
posted by jquinby
on Dec 23, 2008 -
17 comments
