Last call this #GivingTuesday to support the search for life in the cosmos! Imagine discovering that we are not alone in the universe. Your gift can help! Make your gift before midnight here: https://www.seti.org/giving-tuesday-23
Special thanks to our very own Lew Levy, member of the SETI Institute Council of Advisors and Founder of SETI Forward, for his $1,500 gift to our Giving Tuesday campaign!
The Very Large Array (that big collection of radio telescopes in the New Mexico desert) has created a new membership program. It helps pay for #STEM activities and to give schoolkids a chance to visit the VLA. It also supports the construction of the Next Generation Learning Center at the VLA.
I've been there. You can't help but get excited about #science.
From Science Alert: Flicking the switch on any kind of electrical device triggers a marching band of charged particles stepping to the beat of the circuit's voltage. But a new discovery in exotic materials has found electricity doesn't always move in step, and can in fact sometimes bleed in a way that has physicists questioning what we know about the nature of particles. https://flip.it/_jI7zb #Science#Electricity#ExoticMetals
There was a passage in one of the Foundation novels where an armchair scientist described his doing science in terms of comparing the writings of various authors, and Salvor Hardin (I think) appraised the man's perspective on science negatively. I've always remembered that, and took on Hardin's attitude, but since I've actually had to do research...honestly, that's actually a lot of it. There is, perhaps, more effort that must go into systematizing one's own knowledge in parsing the various studies rather than just comparing the relative "authority" of the authors of different studies as I believe the armchair scientist was doing, but, significantly, it's not all just observation and experiment: there's theorizing that has to happen too, which depends on close reading and critically comparing results.
I'm not sure if I'm really arguing against anyone's actual perspective on how science is done here (I barely remember the passage from the novel in the first place.), but I just wanted to make a record of this way of thinking that I suppose has caused me a measure of embarrassment in years past about not being more hands-on in my research. #science#research
Scientists have detected one of the most powerful cosmic rays ever observed. Named after the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu, the particle rivals the famous “Oh-My-God” particle observed in 1991 – and appears to come from a blank area of the sky.