Steve Ersinghaus

Clementine.
“We’re learning to explore Europa by first exploring a Mexican cenote,” said John Rummel, a senior scientist for astrobiology at NASA.

On supernova SN 2006gy:
In a cascade of superlatives that belies the traditional cerebral reserve of their profession, astronomers reported Monday that they had seen the brightest and most powerful stellar explosion ever recorded.
The cataclysm — a monster more than a hundred times as energetic as the typical supernova in which the more massive stars end [...]

I have not and will not be following any of the debates for so-called president, but I read that three grown men didn’t get the memo on evolution.
Three of the candidates indicated that they did not believe in it.
None is a front-runner but even so there will be American scientists who will feel [...]

Joshua at Thoughts from Kansas writes a little about Drew Ryan’s comment on the Mormon religion. (follow links back at the original)
Drew Ryun, Jim Ryun’s baby boy and former Evangelical Outreach director for the RNC, thinks Mormonism is weird. He defends that claim by encouraging people bothered by that statement to read up on Mormon [...]

I think it’s a good thing to ask questions about what a thing can teach, about process and method, but these sorts of critique are growing tiresome.
PARIS (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, elaborating his views on evolution for the first time as Pontiff, says science has narrowed the way life’s origins are understood and Christians [...]

Believe it or not, this actually does help.
As does this and this.

On E8 and symmetry
At the most basic level, the E8 calculation is an investigation of symmetry. Mathematicians invented the Lie groups to capture the essence of symmetry: underlying any symmetrical object, such as a sphere, is a Lie group.
Lie groups come in families. The classical groups A1, A2, A3, … B1, B2, B3, … C1, [...]

When ever I have questions about climate science, global warming, or context, I click over to RealClimate. Al Gore is in the news, of course. The problem of “what’s the real story here” that 24hr news laughs out of the screen always brings out the devils and angels. I see the debate as fact-based with [...]

Terence Tao asks, What is Good Mathematics?

My son S is trying to resolve the planet-no planet issue over Pluto. He’s a big fan of the planets and doesn’t want to hear about this kind of subtraction. On the one hand, I think it’s good scientific practice to put definitions through the consistency test. On the other, the answers seem to lead [...]

Time to get back to some regular entry-writing here. Building and remodeling, teaching and engaging in a second phase pilot–have been taking up much of the fullthrottle time in my space. Been reading a book about telescopes too which has broadened my understanding of the importance of patents and intellectual property in English history [...]

I’ve played through the first episode of SiN Episodes entitled Emergence, dowloaded via steam, and have a few things to say. One of the draws of the game is this
Face off against ruthless enemies, like jetpack soldiers and mutants that evolve as you fight them. Witness enemies that adapt to your actions and truly work [...]

Richard Blaubb writes
I’m new to the whole hyperspace thing, but how can I weigh it down with a monkey wrench or other bodge that can remind me I got stuff to do? I hear the Benedictine monks keep a skull on their tables for the same kinda reason.
This post on books generated some interesting comment [...]

Leonard Susskind on the “landscape” and Anthropics. Again, much as in the last post, very much worth a listen.

I’m reading yet another history of twentieth century science and will be moving on to Krauss in the next phase. While there’s a little more on real collaboration, such as that between Einstein and the mathematician Marcel Grossman, and clearer linkages between Einstein and later developments in physics and detector technology, the narrative seems common. [...]