A book I just read said that while the sun once held a gloriously central place in the lives of men, it has now been sidelined and downgraded by science — which I disagree with, you can’t find a more dedicated sun worshipper than a solar scientist. The book’s complaint is standard English major stuff, […]
Art
The last time anyone proclaimed the end of science — at least, this is what I hear — was just before the arrival of relativity and quantum theory. Abstruse Goose’s brave new islands, quantum gravity and dark energy, are going to require new physics, and new physics is like seeing outside the optical, hearing outside […]
“The universe is what it is, and we’re trying to find out what it is,” John Huchra told me. “The explorers of the new world weren’t trying to prove theories, they were looking at what was out there.” Huchra was an observational astronomer, as opposed to a theorist. Theorists say that, given physics, the universe […]
It’s true, some of those science documentaries are pretty condescending. http://abstrusegoose.com/78
Each week, I’m torn between two warring emotions as I bear a large blue box of empty wine bottles and other glass detritus into the back alley. As I set the bin out for pick-up, I feel a certain satisfaction in a civic duty well done, dispatching this jumble of glass to the recyclers. But […]
It’s hard not to feel depressed. As regular visitors to LWON know, British school children recently raided their piggy banks to help the Tullie House Museum buy an absolutely stunning Roman cavalry helmet discovered last spring in northwestern England (see here for the background). Well, the helmet went up on the auction block at Christie’s […]
A few days ago, while idly surfing the net, I stumbled upon a photograph that seemed to come from another world, a place much more surreal and interesting than the one I inhabit. The photo in question showed a traditional fighting shield from highlands of Papua New Guinea. But it wasn’t the shield that caught […]
Abstruse Goose seems preoccupied with life paths and choices. This time instead of math, he’s talking about physics, specifically about a theory that the many worlds which according to quantum uncertainty (thus Schrodinger’s cats) can possibly exist, actually do co-exist side by side, maybe in different universes or something. I don’t know. It’s pretty arcane. […]