MetaFilter posts tagged with physics and astronomy

The Curious Case of the Missing Sunspots

Electric Dragon — Wed, 20 May 2009 04:48:24 -0800

Solar activity normally follows an 11-year cycle. The new cycle was originally predicted to start in early 2008, but despite a few sunspots appearing last year, the Sun still features a remarkable lack of activity - the deepest minimum since 1913. However, NASA's STEREO mission has seen indications that activity is increasing again, in the form of a coronal mass ejection (video [.mov, 3.3 Mb]), with an accompanying radio burst.

[Previously]

Homework Helper

netbros — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:39:07 -0800

World of Science contains budding encyclopedias of astronomy, scientific biography, chemistry, and physics. This resource has been assembled over more than a decade by internet encyclopedist Eric Weisstein with assistance from the internet community. MeFi visited Weisstein's Mathworld a couple years ago.

Composition of the Universe

knave — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 11:19:07 -0800

A fascinating talk about the composition of the universe [Youtube, approx 1 hour], presented by Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist at CIT. [via] His talk is fast-paced and high level, but has enough detail to get the imagination fired up. Topics include ordinary matter, the standard model, dark matter, dark energy, string theory, supersymmetry, and the expanding universe. The presentation is extremely coherent and easy to follow, even for non-theoretical-physicists such as myself. Enjoy.

Universe Sandbox

stavrosthewonderchicken — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:44:31 -0800

An Interactive Space Simulator "Smash planets together, introduce rogue stars, and build new worlds from spinning discs of debris. Fire a moon into a planet or destroy everything you've created with a super massive black hole. You can simulate and interact with our solar system: the 8 planets,160+ moons, and hundereds of asteroids, the nearest 1000 stars to our Sun, and our local group of galaxies." [31Mb, Windows only, sorry, but see inside for similar Mac and Linux apps] If you're keen and you're not an XP or Vista user, you'll probably like Stellarium [Linux, Mac or Windows] and Celestia [Linux, Mac or Windows] [previously] as well, which are less physics simulation and more 'fly through the universe' brain food, but heaps of fun, too.

free Yale courses online

nickyskye — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 07:43:26 -0800

Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to seven introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University:Astronomy, English, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, Religious Studies: a full set of class lectures produced in high-quality video, syllabi, suggested readings, and problem sets. The lectures are available as downloadable videos, and an audio-only version is also offered. In addition, searchable transcripts of each lecture are provided.

UniverseNewsFilter: Scientists claim to have detected dark matter

Kattullus — Tue, 15 May 2007 21:12:14 -0800

UniverseNewsFilter: Scientists claim to have detected dark matter! Here are NASA's press release, feature page and multimedia presentation. For an explanation what dark matter is, I refer you to this page. After all that excitement, you can sit down and work out how much dark matter is in the Milky Way.

Super-supernova

Citizen Premier — Mon, 07 May 2007 20:56:48 -0800

New supernova is bright. Too bright, in fact.

Newtonian dynamics unmodified

kliuless — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 19:46:09 -0800

Good evidence that dark matter is for real.

The scientific tradition in Africa

Wolfdog — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 06:58:45 -0800

The scientific tradition in Africa. An interview with Thebe Medupe, a South African astronomer.

Function Follows Form in Quantum Mechanics and Astronomy. The need for a NEW Black Hole.

nthdegx — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 02:21:32 -0800

Function Follows Form in Quantum Mechanics and Astronomy. The need for a NEW Black Hole. A Weblog.

everyone's a scientist

mdn — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 10:00:32 -0800

The sun is solid (this has beautiful images, btw). The earth is fixed, or maybe growing; relativi ty is wrong, and so is most of current thinking... For the intriguing as well as the insane, visit the fringes of science.

Come on big gravity waves... No whammies!

justkevin — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 09:38:21 -0800

Do Gravity Waves Exist? This is one of the big unanswered questions in physics. Gravity telescopes such as the LIGO and the Geo 600 may soon tell us. These massive detectors are sensitive to a displacement of 1 part in 1000000000000000000000-- that's like "measuring a change of one hydrogen atom diameter in the distance from the Earth to the Sun." Such a discovery would mean a tremendous boom to science. And big cash payouts to those who put their money where there mouth was.

Math You Don't Know, and Math You Didn't Know You Didn't Know.

odinsdream — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 10:39:15 -0800

Jim Loy's Mathematics Page is (among other things) a collection of interesting theorems (like Napoleon's Triangle theorem), thoughtful discussions of both simple and complex math, and geometric constructions (my personal favorite); the latter of which contains surprisingly-complex discussions on the trisection of angles, or the drawing of regular pentagons.

Similarly enthralling are the pages on Billiards (and the physics of), Astronomy (and the savants of), and Physics (and the Phlogiston Theory of), all of which are rife with illustrations and diagrams. See the homepage for much more.

If you like your geometric constructions big, try Zef Damen's Crop Circle Reconstructions.

Even the Non Scientist and Curious!

breezeway — Mon, 07 Mar 2005 09:40:51 -0800

On the mission to understand and communicate miracles of Life on Earth and the mysteries reaching beyond the stars.

The truth behind the first cheesy special effects

Gyan — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 17:57:05 -0800

Misconceptions about the Big Bang

Great television science presenters and their shows

milovoo — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 14:07:53 -0800

Great television science presenters and their shows: Tim Hunkin "the Secret Life of Machines", Jacob Bronowski "The Ascent of Man", James Burke "Connections", David Attenborough "Trials of Life" "Blue Planet" etc., Marlin Perkins "Wild Kingdom", Don Herbert "Watch Mr. Wizard", Adam Hart-Davis "Science Shack" "Rough Science", Jack Horkheimer "Star Gazer". Does anyone else have any favorites, past or present?

Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics

vraxoin — Wed, 20 Nov 2002 08:17:09 -0800

"I was willing to bet that there was going to be a universe, and I hit the nail on the head." The other day we had Avram Davidson, which got me thinking of Calvino's Invisible Cities, but all the recent talk about black holes made me remember that Italo Calvino is at his most charming when he's playing with physics, math, and cosmology in Cosmicomics.

samsara — Wed, 07 Aug 2002 16:14:00 -0800

A computer aided simulation builds a spiral galaxy from its beginning. In all, 390,000 particles were placed in an arrangement similar to a newborn galaxy. The end result after three months is an event that is believed to take billions of years to occur. (animation)

Jubey — Sat, 25 May 2002 04:55:05 -0800

Instant Suntan. A supernova in our galactic backyard may be on the verge of exploding. In the (unlikely) event that it happens tomorrow, how would you spend your last day on earth?

holycola — Sat, 09 Feb 2002 23:53:45 -0800

It ain't so dark anymore. Dark matter seems poised to assume its place among those astronomical phenomena that were predicted to exist before being observed. The planet Neptune and black holes to mention two of them. The last 100 years have really been a boom time for astronomy, and they're not slowing down.

stuporJIX — Sat, 26 Jan 2002 03:36:52 -0800

Wot, no black holes? Those wacky boffins in science land have already had a pop at the Higg's boson, but now they're moving on to everybody's favourite theoretical singularity, with a new theory about what happens when a star kicks the astral bucket.

stuporJIX — Fri, 21 Dec 2001 07:03:04 -0800

So you think the expansion of the universe is accelerating? Think again! (Contains links to full paper in .pdf etc.)