It’s come to this. W/ #Earth at its hottest point in recorded history, & #humans doing far from enough to stop its overheating, a small but growing number of #astronomers & #physicists are proposing a potential fix that could have leaped from the pages of science fiction: The equivalent of a giant beach umbrella, floating in outer #space.
Hahaha, amazeballs. Never again shall i gently mock #physicists for their #SphericalCows analogy propensity. They ain't got nuffin' on these idiot #economists 🙄 🤦♀️
Possibly the part of the essay where i laughed loudest, was this;
Nordhaus has opined that agriculture is “the part of the economy that is sensitive to climate change,” but because it accounts for just 3 percent of national output, climate disruption of food production cannot produce a “very large effect on the U.S. economy.” It is unfortunate for his calculations that agriculture is the foundation on which the other 97 percent of GDP depends. Without food — strange that one needs to reiterate this — there is no economy, no society, no civilization.
Those physicists who communicate with the public…have a responsibility to tell the story straight. We must be careful to present the failures along with the successes. Indeed, being honest about failures is likely to help rather than hurt our cause.
—Lee Smolin, The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next #physics#physicists
I often like to do thought experiments while #cycling and sometimes I can’t think all the way through to the end of the answer. Here’s a recent one for #physicists who specialize in #relativity. A #bike's #wheel rotates such that the bit in contact with the #road is instantaneously at rest with respect to the #ground (no skidding), at least in #NewtonianMechanics. On the other hand, the bit diametrically opposite to it is moving at precisely twice the speed of the #bicycle...
Of course the following faces an ENORMOUS difficulty, which is because IT IS THE ENTIRETY OF THEORETICAL #PHYSICISTS WHO CAN GET PUBLISHED IN MAJOR JOURNALS who are the thoroughly innumerate and inept persons believing the nonsense I’m talking about here, I am unlikely even to get a reading:
Also #Today, we celebrate the life and legacy of #MaxPlanck, a brilliant physicist and gifted musician. His contributions to physics were unparalleled, and his love for creativity and intellectual pursuit continues to inspire us today.